;". 



I 



THE 
SOUTHERN SOUTH 



THE 
SOUTHERN SOUTH 



BY 
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D. 

PROFESSOB OP HISTORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1910 






Copyright, 1910, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published April, 1910 



©C!,A265032 



/ 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 
I. — Materials 
II. — The Southland 
III, — ^The Poor White 
IV. — Immigration 
V. — Southern Leadership 
VI. — Southern Temperament 
VII. — Attitude toward History 
VIII. — Negro Character 
IX. — Negro Life .... 
X. — The Negro at Work . 
XL — Is the Negro Rising? 
XII. — Race Association 
XIII. — Race Separation 
XIV. — Crime and its Penalties . 
XV. — Lynching .... 
XVI. — ^Actual Wealth . 
XVII. — Comparative Wealth 
XVIII. — Making Cotton . 
XIX. — Cotton Hands 
XX. — Peonage .... 

XXL — White Education 
XXII. — Negro Education 
XXIII. — Objections to Education 
XXIV. — Postulates of the Problem 
XXV.— The Wrong Way Out 
XX VI. — Material and Political Remedied 
XXVII. — Moral Remedies . 

MAP AND TABLES 
INDEX . 



1 

7 

20 

30 

4.S 

59 

66 

80 

91 

106 

120 

132 

149 

166 

LSI 

205 

218 

231 

250 

261 

278 

288 

308 

323 

338 

347 

367 

378 

395 

419 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 



INTRODUCTION 

THE keynote to which intelligent spirits respond most 
quickly in the United States is Americanism; no 
nation is more conscious of its own existence and its 
importance in the universe, more interested in the great- 
ness, the strength, the pride, the influence, and the future 
of the common country. Nevertheless, any observer pass- 
ing through all the parts of the United States would dis- 
cover that the Union is made up not only of many states 
but of several sections — an East, a Middle West, a Far 
West, and a South. Of these four regions the three which 
adhere most strongly to each other and have least conscious- 
ness of rivalry among themselves are often classed together 
as " The North," and they are set in rivalry against " The 
South," because of a tradition of opposing interests, com- 
mercial and political, which culminated in the Civil War 
of 1861, and is still felt on both sides of the line. 

That the South is now an integral and inseparable part 
of the Union is proved by a sense of a common blood, a 
common heritage, and a common purpose, which is as 
lively in the Southern as in the Northern part of the 
Union. The dominant English race stock is the same in 
both sections : in religion, in laws, in traditions, in ex- 
pectation of the future, all sections of the United States 
are closer together than, for instance, the three compo- 

1 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

nents of the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 
Whatever the divergence between Southerners and North- 
erners at home, once outside the limits of their common 
country they are alike; the Frenchman may see more dif- 
ference between a Bavarian and a Prussian than between 
a Georgian and a Vermonter. 

It is not to the purpose of this book to describe those 
numerous common traits which belong to people in all 
sections of the United States, but to bring into relief some 
of the characteristics of the South which are not shared 
by the North. For it is certain that the physical and 
climatic conditions of the South are different from those 
of the North; and equally sure that as a community the 
South has certain temperamental peculiarities which af- 
fect its views of the world in general and also of its own 
problems. Slavery, which had little permanent effect on 
the society or institutions of those parts of the North in 
which it existed up to the Revolution, was for two cen- 
turies a large factor in Southern life, and has left many 
marks tipon both white and negro races. The existence 
of a formerly servile race now ten millions strong still 
influences the whole development of the South. 

Unlike the North, which ever since the Civil War has 
felt disposed to consider itself the characteristic United 
States, the South looks upon itself, and is looked upon by 
its neighbors, as a unit within a larger unit; as set apart 
by its traditions, its history, and its commercial interests. 
The ex-president of the Southern Confederacy a few years 
ago at a public meeting declared that he appeared " In 
a defense of our Southland." A Southland there is, in 
the sense of a body of states which, while now yielding 
to none in loyalty to tJie Union and in participation in its 
great career, adhere together with such a sense of peculiar 

2 



INTRODUCTION 

life and standards as is not to be found in any group of 
Northern communities except perhaps New England. 

The Northerner who addresses himself to these special 
conditions of the South must expect to be asked what 
claim he has to form or express a judgment upon his 
neighbors. The son of an Ohio abolitionist, accustomed 
from childhood to hear questions of slavery and of nation- 
ality discussed, I have for many years sought and ac- 
cepted opportunities to learn something of these great 
problems at first hand. As a teacher I have come into 
contact with some of the brightest spirits of the South, 
and among former students count at least two of the 
foremost writers upon the subject — one a White and the 
other a Negro. For some years I have carried on an 
active correspondence with Southern people of every vari- 
ety of sentiment. I have diligently read Southern news- 
papers and have been honored by their critical and some- 
times unflattering attention. In the last twenty-five years 
I have made a dozen or more visits to various parts of the 
South ranging in length from a few days to four months, 
and therein have gained some personal acquaintance with 
the conditions of all the former slave-holding states except 
Missouri and Florida. In the winter of 1907-8 I took 
a journey of about a thousand miles through rural parts 
of the belt of states from Texas to North Carolina, with 
the special purpose of coming into closer personal touch 
with some phases of the problem upon which information 
was lacking. 

There need be no illusions as to the extent of the 
knowledge thus acquired. These various journeys and 
points of contact with Southern people have shown how 
large is the Southern problem, and how hard it is to dis- 
cover all the factors which make the problem difficult. 

3 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

Every year opens out some new unexplored field which 
must be taken into account if one is to hope for anything 
like a comprehensive view of the subject. How shall any 
Northerner coming into a slave-holding region set his im- 
pressions alongside the experience of men who have lived 
all their lives in that environment? What is seven months' 
residence by a visitor, a fly on the wheel, against seventy 
years' residence by men who are a part of the problem ? 

There are two sides to this question of the value of the 
observations of an outsider. Sometimes he is the only 
one who thinks investigation worth while; and too much 
caution in hazarding an opinion would put a stop to all 
criticism by anybody except the people criticised. The 
observer over the walls may see more than the dweller 
within. A Southerner coming up to make a study of the 
government in Massachusetts would probably discover 
queer things about the Street Department of Boston that 
escape the attention of those who breathe the city's dust; 
he might learn more about the conditions of mill towns 
like Fall Eiver than the citizen of Boston has ever ac- 
quired; he might attend a town meeting in villages like 
Barnstable, into the like of which the Fall River man 
never so much as sets his foot ; he may find out more about 
the county commissioners of Bristol County than was 
ever dreamed by the taxpayers of Barnstable; he may in- 
form the dairyman on Cape Cod of the conditions of the 
tobacco farms on the Connecticut; and hear complaints 
from the factory hands of New Bedford which never reach 
their employers. It is just so in the South, where many 
people know intimately some one phase of the race prob- 
lem, while few have thought out its details, or followed 
it from state to state. A professor in the University of 
Louisiana might tell more about the race and labor con- 

4 



INTRODUCTION 

ditions of his State than the writer shall ever learn; but 
perhaps he could not contribute to knowledge of the Sea 
Islands of South Carolina or the Texas truck farms or 
the mountains of North Carolina. The privilege of the 
outside visitor to the South is to range far afield, to 
compare conditions in various states, and to make gen- 
eralizations, subject to the criticism of better qualified 
investigators who may go over the same area of printed 
book and open country, but which have a basis of personal 
acquaintance with the region. 

If this book make any contribution toward the knowl- 
edge and appreciation of Southern conditions, it must be 
by observing throughout two principles. The first is that 
no statement of fact be made without a basis in printed 
material, written memoranda, or personal memory of the 
testimony of people believed to speak the truth. The sec- 
ond is that in the discussion there be no animus against 
the South as a section or a people. I have found many 
friends there. I believe that the points of view of the re- 
flective Northerner and the reflective Southerner are not 
so far apart as both have supposed; as a Union soldier's 
son I feel a personal warmth of admiration for the heroism 
of the rival army, and for the South as a whole; and I 
recognize the material growth, the intellectual, uplift, and 
the moral fervor of the Southern people. In one sense I 
am a citizen of the Southland. When a few years ago 
at a Phi Beta Kappa dinner in Cambridge, the president 
of the University of North Carolina said : " I love North 
Carolina, I ought to love that State, because it is my native 
country ! " President Eliot replied, when his turn came : 
" President Winston says that North Carolina is his native 
country; gentlemen, it's our native country." 

For this reason has been chosen as the title of this book, 
5 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

"The Southern South." Leaving out of account those 
parts of the South, such as the peninsula of Florida, which 
are really transplanted portions of the N'orth; setting 
aside also the manifold national characteristics shared by 
both sections, I shall attempt to consider those conditions 
and problems which are in a measure peculiar to the South. 
The aim of the work is not to cavil but to describe, with 
full realization that many of the things upon which com- 
ment is passed are criticised in the South, and have a 
counterpart in the North. 

Properly to acknowledge the information and impres- 
sions gained from friends, and sometimes from persons 
not so friendly, would require mention of scores of names ; 
but I cannot forbear to recognize the candor and courtesy 
which, with few exceptions, have met my inquiries even 
from those who had little sympathy with what they pre- 
sumed to be my views. The ground covered by the book 
was traversed in somewhat different analysis and briefer 
form in a course of lectures which I delivered before the 
Lowell Institute in Boston during February and March, 
1908. Parts of the subject have also been summarized in 
a series of letters to the Boston Transcript, and an article 
in the North A7nerican Review, published in July, 1908. 
While a year's reflection and restatement in the light of 
additional evidence have not changed the essential conclu- 
sions, I have found myself continually infused with a 
stronger sense that the best will and effort of the best 
elements in the South are hampered and limited by the 
immense difBculties of those race relations which most 
contribute to keep alive a Southern South. 



CHAPTEE I 

MATERIALS 

FOR an understanding of the Southern South the ma- 
terials are abundant but little systematized. In ad- 
dition to the sources of direct information there is 
a literature of the Southern question beginning as far back 
as Samuel SewalFs pamphlet " Joseph Sold by His Breth- 
ren/"' published in 1700. Down to the Civil War the 
greater part of this literature was a controversy over 
slavery, which has little application to present problems, 
except as showing the temper of the times and as furnish- 
ing evidence to test the validity of certain traditions of 
the slavery epoch. The publications which are most help- 
ful have appeared since 1880, and by far the greater num- 
ber since 1900. Besides the formal books there is a shower 
of pamphlets and fugitive pieces; and newspapers and 
periodicals have lately given much space to the discus- 
sion of these topics. ' 

So multifarious is this literature that clues have be- 
come necessary, and there are three or four serviceable 
bibliographies, some on the negro problem and some on 
the Southern question as a whole. The earliest of these 
works is " Bibliography of the Negroes in America " 
(published in the " Reports " of the United States Com- 
missioner of Education, 1894, vol. i). More searching, 
and embracing the whole field of the Negro's life in 

7 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

America, are two bibliographies by W. E. Burghardt 
DuBois, the first being " A Select Bibliography of the 
American Negro " (" Atlanta University Publications/' 
1901), and "A Select Bibliography of the Negro Ameri- 
can" ("Atlanta University Publications/' No. 10, 1905). 
A. P. C. Griffin has also published through the library 
of Congress " Select List of Eeferences on the Negro 
Question" (2d ed., 1906) and "List of Discussions of the 
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments " (1906). One of 
the most useful sele«t bibliographies is that of Walter L. 
Fleming in his " Reconstruction of the Seceded States, 
1865-76" (1905). The author of this book, in his 
volume on "Slavery and Abolition" ("The American 
Nation/' vol. xvi, 1908), has printed a bibliographical 
chapter upon the general question of negro servitude in 
America. The study of the Southern question would be 
much lightened were there a systematic general bibliog- 
raphy, with a critical discussion of the various works that 
may be listed. 

A part of the problem is the spirit of those who write 
formal books, and a group of works may be enumerated 
which take an extreme anti-Negro view and seek to throw 
upon the African race the responsibility for whatever is 
wrong in the South. Dr. R. W. Shufeldt (late of the 
United States army) has published " The Negro a Men- 
ace to American Civilization " (1907), of which the theme 
is sufficiently set forth by the wearisome use of the term 
" hybrid " for mulatto ; he illustrates his book, supposed 
to be a logical argument on the inferiority of the Negro, 
with reproductions of photographs showing the torture 
and death of a Negro in process of lynching by a white 
mob; and he sums up his judgment of the negro race 
in the phrase " The Negro in fact has no morals, 

8 



MATERIALS 

and it is therefore out of the question for him to be 
immoral." 

The most misleading of all the Southern writers is 
Thomas Dixon, Jr., a man who is spending his life in the 
attempt to persuade his neighbors that the North is pas- 
sionately hostile to the South; that the black is bent on 
dishonoring the white race; and that the ultimate remedy 
is extermination. In his three novels, " The Leopard's 
Spots" (1902), "The Clansman" (1905), and "The 
Traitor" (1907), he paints a lurid picture of Reconstruc- 
tion, in which the high-toned Southern gentleman tells the 
white lady who wishes to endow a college for Negroes 
that he would like — " to box you up in a glass cage, such 
as are used for rattlesnakes, and ship you back to Bos- 
ton." One of these novels, "The Clansman," has been 
dramatized, and its production, against the remonstrances 
of the respectable colored people in a Missouri town, 
led directly to a lynching. No reasonable being would 
hold the whole South responsible for such appeals to 
passion; but unfortunately many well-meaning people 
accept that responsibility. In Charlotte, N. C, the 
most refined and respectable white people went to see 
" The Clansman " played and showed every sign of ap- 
proval, as appears to have been the case in Providence, 
R. I., in 1909. A recent writer, John C. Reed, in his 
"Brothers' War," brackets Thomas Dixon, Jr., with 
John C. Calhoun as exponents of Southern feeling and 
especially lauds Dixon as the " exalted glorification " of 
the Ku Klux. 

The volume from Dixon's pen which has had most in- 
fluence is "The Leopard's Spots," the accuracy of which 
is marked by such assertions as that Congress made a law 
which gave "to India and Egypt the mastery of the 

9 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

cotton markets of the world"; and that it cost $200,- 
000,000 to pay the United States troops in the South in 
the year 1867. The book has been traversed with great 
skill by a negro writer. When Dixon asks : " Can you 
change the color of the Negro's skin, the kink of his hair, 
the bulge of his lip or the beat of his heart with a spell- 
ing-book or a machine ? '^ Kelly Miller replies : " You 
need not be so frantic about the superiority of your race. 
Whatever superiority it may possess, inherent or acquired, 
will take care of itself without such rabid support. . . . 
Your loud protestations, backed up by such exclamatory 
outbursts of passion, make upon the reflecting mind the 
impression that you entertain a sneaking suspicion of their 
validity.'' 

Many Southern writers are disposed to put their prob- 
lems into the form of novels, and there are half a dozen 
other stories nearly all having for their stock in trade the 
statutes of Reconstruction, the negro politician who wants 
to marry a white woman, and the vengeance inflicted on 
him by the Ku Klux. In the latest of these novels the 
President of the United States is pictured as dying of a 
broken heart because his daughter has married a man 
who is discovered to be a Negro. 

A book very widely read and quoted in the South is 
Frederick L. Hoffman, " Race Traits and Tendencies " 
(" Am. Economic Association Publications," xi, Nos. 1, 2, 
and 3, 1896). "Race Traits" is written by a man of 
foreign extraction who therefore feels that he is outside 
the currents of prejudice; it is well studied, scientifically 
arranged, and rests chiefly on statistical summaries care- 
fully compiled. The thesis of the book is that the Afri- 
cans in America are a dying race, but many of the gen- 
eralizations are based upon statistics of too narrow a range 

10 



MATERIALS 

to permit safe deductions, or upon the confessedly im- 
perfect data of the Federal censuses. 

Quite different in its tone is a book which is said to 
have been widely sold throughout the South, and which 
seems to be written for no other purpose but to arouse 
the hostility of the Whites against the Negroes. The title 
page reads : '' The Negro a Beast or In the Image of 
God The Beasoner of the Age, the Revelator of the 
Century! The Bible as it is! The Negro and his Re- 
lation to the Human Family! The Negro a beast, but 
created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may 
be of service to his master — the White man. The Negro 
not the Son of Ham, Neither can it be proven by the 
Bible, and the argument of the theologian who would 
claim such, melts to mist before the thunderous and con- 
vincing arguments of this masterful booh." This savage 
work quotes with approval an alleged statement of a 
Northern man that inside the next thirty years the South 
will be obliged to " Re-enslave, kill or export the bulk 
of its Negro population." It insists that the Negro is an 
ape, notwithstanding the fact that he has not four hands ; 
he has no soul; the mulatto has no soul; the expression 
"The human race" is a false term invented by Plato 
"in the atheistic school of evolution." The serpent in 
the garden of Eden was a Negro. Cain was also mixed 
up in the detestable business of miscegenation, for the 
Bible says, " Sin lieth at thy door, and unto thee shall 
be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." The writer 
has taken pains to point out that "The mere fact that 
the inspired writer refers to it in the masculine gender 
is no evidence that it was not a female." The mulatto 
being " doomed by Divine edict to instant death . . . 
neither the mulatto nor his ultimate offspring can acquire 
2 11 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

the right to live. This being true, it follows that these 
monstrosities have no rights social, financial, political or 
religious that man need respect." Wherever you find the 
word beast in the Bible it means the Negro ! 

If such passionate and rancorous books were all that 
sprang from the South, the problem would end in a race 
war; but as will be seen throughout this discussion, there 
are two camps of opinion and utterance among Southern 
white people. On one side the Kingdom of Heaven suf- 
fereth violence and the violent take it by force; on the 
other side there is a body of white writers who go deeper 
into the subject, who recognize the responsibility of the 
white race as the dominant element, and who preach and 
expect peace and uplift. Such a writer is A. H. Shannon 
in his " Eacial Integrity and Other Features of the Negro 
Problem" (printed in Nashville and Dallas, 1907). In 
good temper and at much length he argues that the Negro 
owes to the white man a debt of gratitude for bringing 
his ancestors out of African barbarism, though the prin- 
cipal evils of the negro question are due to the inferior 
race. 

A widely read book of the same type is Thomas Nelson 
Page's "The Negro: the Southerner's Problem" (1904). 
Mr. Page accepts as a fact the existence of various classes 
of Negroes self-respecting and worthy of the respect of 
others; and he believes, on the whole, that the colored 
race deserve commendation. "The Negro has not be- 
haved unnaturally," he says ; " he has, indeed, in the main 
behaved well." The main difficulty with Mr. Page's book 
is that it fails to go to the bottom of the causes which 
underlie the trouble; and that while admitting the fact 
that a considerable fraction of the negro race is improv- 
ing, he sees no ultimate solution. He suggests but tiree 

12 



MATERIALS 

alternatives: removal, which he admits to be impossible; 
amalgamation, which is equally unthinkable; and an ab- 
solute separation of social and apparently of economic 
life, which could be accomplished only by turning over 
definite regions for negro occupation. Starting out with 
undoubted good will to the black race, the writer ends with 
little hope of a distinct bettering of conditions. 

Quite a different point of view is William Benjamin 
Smith's "The Color Line— A Brief in Behalf of the 
Unborn" (1905), which is based on the assertion that 
the Negro is no part of the human race and hence that 
amalgamation is a crime against nature. The general 
trend of Professor Smith's book is an argument, somewhat 
technical and not convincing, that the blackman is phys- 
ically, mentally, and morally so different from the white 
man that he may be set outside the community. This 
was of course the argument for slavery, and if it be true, 
is still an argument for peonage or some other recognized 
position of dependency. From this deduction, however, 
Smith sheers off; he uses the inferiority of the Negro 
chiefly as an argument against the mixture of the races, 
which he believes to be a danger; and he makes an in- 
genious distinction between the present mixture in which 
the fathers were Whites and a possible future amalgama- 
tion in which the fathers might be Negroes. 

The most suggestive recent study of the negro ques- 
tion is Edgar Gardner Murphy's " Problems of the Pres- 
ent South" (1904). Mr. Murphy is an Alabamian, very 
familiar with Southern conditions. While not optimistic 
— ^nobody in the South is optimistic on the race question 
— he recognizes the possibility of a much better race feel- 
ing than the present one. It is interesting to see that this 
man who, as champion of the movement against child labor 

13 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

in the South, has been so successful in relieving children 
of a terrible burden, feels sure that the worst thing that 
can be done for the community is to keep the Negro 
ignorant. He is perfectly willing to face the issue that 
those who show the qualities of manhood should have the 
reward of manhood, namely, the right to participate in 
politics ; and the acknowledgment of that right he says does 
not imply race fusion. He gives up nothing of his South- 
ern birthright, and courageously asserts the ability of his 
section to work out its problem for itself. 

Genial in tone, full of the ripe thought of an accom- 
plished writer is William Garrott Brown, " The Lower 
South" (1902), which is not a discussion of the race 
question so much as of the character and point of view 
of the planter before the Civil War and the Southern 
gentleman since that time, a plea for a sympathetic un- 
derstanding of the real difficulties of the South and its 
sense of responsibility. 

These five books are proof not only that there is wide 
divergence of views, but also that genuine Southern men, 
strongly loyal to their own section, can set an example 
of moderation of speech, breadth of view, and willingness 
to accept and to promote a settlement of the Southern 
question through the elevation of the people, white and 
black, who have ultimate power over that question. 

In slavery days almost all the discussion of race ques- 
tions came from the Whites, Southern or Northern. Now, 
there is a school of negro controversialists and observers, 
several of whom have had the highest advantages of edu- 
cation and of a personal acquaintance with the problems 
which they discuss, and thus possess some advantages over 
many white writers. About twenty years ago George W. 
Williams published his " History of the Negro Eace in 

14 



MATERIALS 

America " (1883), which, though to a large degree a com- 
pilation, is a respectable and useful book. Another writer, 
William H. Thomas, in his " The American Negro " 
(1901), has made admissions with regard to the moral 
qualities of his fellow Negroes which have been widely 
taken up and quoted by anti- Negro writers. Charles W. 
Chesnutt, in several books of collected stories, of which 
"The Conjure Woman" (1899) is the liveliest, and in 
two novels, "The House Behind the Cedars" (1900) and 
the "Marrow of Tradition" (1901), has criticised the 
rigid separation of races. No man feels more keenly the 
race distinctions than one like Chesnutt, more Caucasian 
than African in his make-up. One of the best of their 
writers is Kelly Miller, who has contributed nearly fifty 
articles to various periodicals upon the race problems; 
and in humor, good temper, and appreciation of the real 
issues, shows himself often superior to the writers whom 
he criticises. The most systematic discussion of the race 
by one of themselves is William A. Sinclair's " The After- 
math of Slavery" (1905), which, though confused in ar- 
rangement and unscientific in form, is an excellent sum- 
mary of the arguments in favor of the negro race and the 
Negroes' political privileges. 

The most eminent man whom the African race in 
America has produced is Booker T. Washington, the 
well-known president of Tuskegee. In addition to his 
numerous addresses and his personal influence, he has con- 
tributed to the discussion several volumes, partly auto- 
biographic and partly didactic. His " Up from Slavery " 
(1901) is a remarkable story of his own rise from the 
deepest obscurity to a place of great influence. In three 
other volumes, "Character Building" (1902), "Work- 
ing with the Hands" (1904), and "The Negro in Busi- 

15 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ness" (1907), he has widened his moral influence upon 
his race. "The Future of the American Negro" (1899) 
is the only volume in which Washington discusses the race 
problem as a whole; and his advice here, as in all his 
public utterances, is for the Negro to show himself so 
thTifty and so useful that the community cannot get on 
without him. 

Paul L. Dunbar, the late negro poet, contented him- 
self with his irresistible fun and his pathos without deep 
discussions of problems. The most distinguished literary 
man of the race is \Y. E. Burghardt DuBois, an A.B. and 
Ph.D. of Harvard, who studied several years in Germany, 
and as Professor of Sociology in Atlanta University has 
had an unusual opportunity to study his people. Be- 
sides many addresses and numerous articles, he has con- 
tributed to the discussion his " Souls of Black Folk " 
(1903), which, in a style that places him among the best 
writers of English to-day in America, passionately speaks 
the suifering of the highly endowed and highly educated 
mulatto who is shut out of the kingdom of kindred spirits 
only by a shadow of color. Witness such phrases as these : 
"To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in 
a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships " ; or this, 
"The sincere and passionate belief that somewhere be- 
tween men and cattle, God created a tertium quid, and 
called it a Negro, — a clownish, simple creature, at times 
even lovable within its limitation, but straitly fore or- 
dained to walk within the Veil.^' 

The three groups just sketched, the violent Southern- 
ers, moderate Southerners, and negro writers, each from 
its own point of view has aimed to study the complicated 
subject, to classify and generalize. Nearly all the writers 
are sources, in that they are conversant with the South 

16 



MATERIALS 

and have a personal acquaintance with its problems; but 
their books are discussions rather than materials. What 
is now most needed for a solid understanding of the ques- 
tion is monographic first-hand studies of limited scope 
in selected areas. Unfortunately that material is still 
scanty. Professor DuBois has made a series of investi- 
gations as to the conditions of the Negro; first, his elabo- 
rate monograph, " The Philadelphia Negro " (published 
by the University of Pennsylvania, 1899), then a series 
of sociological studies in the "Atlanta University Pub- 
lications," and several " Bulletins " published by the 
United States Department of Labor, notably " Census 
Bulletin No. 8: Negroes in the United States" (1904). 
He has thus made himself a leading authority upon the 
actual conditions, particularly of the negro farmer. At 
Atlanta University and also at Hampton, Va., are held 
annual conferences, the proceedings of which are pub- 
lished every year, including a large amount of first-hand 
material on present conditions. One Northern white 
man, Carl Kelsey, has addressed himself to this problem 
in his "The Negro Farmer" (1903), which is a careful 
study of the conditions of the Negroes in tidewater, Vir- 
ginia. 

One practical Southern cotton planter has devoted 
much time and attention to the scientific study of the 
conditions on his own plantation and elsewhere as a con- 
tribution toward a judgment of the race problem. This 
is Alfred H. Stone, of Greenville, Miss., who has pub- 
lished half a dozen monographs, several of which are 
gathered into a volume, under the title " Studies in the 
American Eace Problem" (1908). He is now engaged, 
under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution, on a study 
of the whole question. He has visited several Southern 

17 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

states and the West Indies, and brings to his inquiries the 
point of view of an employer of Negroes who wishes them 
well and sees the interest of his country in the improve- 
ment of negro labor. Perhaps his judgment is somewhat 
affected by the special conditions of Mississippi and of his 
own neighborhood, in which the Negroes are very numer- 
ous and perhaps more than usually disturbing. The re- 
sults of his latest investigations will appear under the title 
" Eace Eelations in America " ; and may be expected to 
be the most thorough contribution to the subject made by 
any writer. 

Among less formal publications are the negro periodi- 
cals, which are very numerous and include Alexanders 
Magazine and a few other well-written and well-edited 
summaries of things of special interest to the race. The 
whole question has become so interesting that several of 
the great magazines have taken it up. The World's Work 
devoted its number of June, 1907, almost wholly to the 
South; and the American Magazine published in 1907-8 
a series of articles by Eay Stannard Baker on the subject. 
In 1904 the Outlook published a series of seven articles 
by Ernest H. Abbott based upon personal study. An 
interesting contribution is the so-called " Autobiography 
of a Southerner," by " Nicholas Worth," published in the 
Atlantic Monthly in 1906. Whoever Nicholas Worth may 
be, there can be no doubt as to his Southern birth, train- 
ing, and understanding, nor of his excellent style, sense 
of humor, and power to make clear the growth of race 
feeling in the South since the Civil War. 

All these and many other printed materials are at the 
service of the Northern as of the Southern investigator. 
Among their contradictory and controversial testimony 
may be discerned various cross currents of thought; and 

18 



MATERIALS 

their statements of fact and the results of their researches 
form a body of material which may be analyzed as a basis 
for new deductions. But nobody can rely wholly on 
printed copy for knowledge of such complicated questions. 
Books cannot be cross-examined nor compelled to fill up 
gaps in their statements. The investigator of the South 
must learn the region and the people so as to take in his 
own impressions at first hand. Printed materials are 
the woof; but the warp of the fabric is the geography of 
the South, the distribution of soil, the character of the 
crops, the habits of the people, their thrift and unthrift, 
their own ideas as to their difficulties. 

Yet let no one deceive himself as to what may be 
learned, even by wide acquaintance or long residence. It 
is not so long ago that a Southern lady who had lived for 
ten years in the neighborhood of Boston was amazed to 
be told that such Massachusetts officers as Robert G. Shaw, 
during the Civil War, actually came from good families; 
she had always understood that people of position would 
not take commissions in the hireling Federal army. If 
such errors can be made as to the ^orth, like misconcep- 
tions may arise as to the South. All that has ever been 
written about the Southern question must be read in the 
light of the environment, the habits of thought, and the 
daily life of the Southern people, white and black. 



CHAPTER II 



THE SOUTHLAND 



IN what do the Southern States differ as to extent and 
climate from other parts of the United States ? First 
of all, what does the Southland include ? Previous to 
the Civil War, when people said " the South " they usually 
meant the fifteen states in which slavery was established. 
Since 1865 some inroads and additions to that group have 
been made. Maryland is rather a middle state than a 
Southern ; West Virginia has been cut off from the South, 
and is now essentially Western, as is Missouri; but the 
new State of Oklahoma is a community imbued with a 
distinct Southern spirit. For many reasons the Xorthern 
tier of former slave-holding states differ from their South- 
ern neighbors ; and in this book less attention will be given 
to Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee 
than to their South-lying neighbors, because they are be- 
coming to a considerable degree mineral and manufac- 
turing communities, in which the negro problem is of 
diminishing significance. The true Southland, the region 
in which conditions are most disturbed and an adjustment 
of races is most necessary, where cotton is most significant, 
is the belt of seven states from South Carolina to Texas, 
to which the term *^ Lower South " has often been applied. 
Physically, the Southern States differ much both from 
their Northeastern and their Northwestern neighbors. 

20 



THE SOUTHLAND 

No broken country like New England reaches down to the 
coast; no rocky headlands flank deep natural harbors; 
there are, except in central Alabama and in Texas, no 
treeless prairies. Three of these states, South Carolina, 
Georgia, and Alabama, include mountain regions which, 
though interesting in themselves, are little related to the 
great problem of race relations and of race hostility. 
Physically, they protect the cotton belt from the North, 
and thus affect the climate; and they are fountains of 
water power as yet little developed. South of the moun- 
tains and thence westward through northern Mississippi, 
Louisiana, and Texas, is a hill region which is from every 
point of view one of the parts of the South most interest- 
ing and at the same time least known by Northerners. 
This is the traditional home of the Poor Whites; whose 
backwardness is in itself a problem; whose industry con- 
tributes much more than the world has been prone to 
allow to the wealth of the South; and whose progress is 
one of the most encouraging things in the present situa- 
tion, for they furnish the major part of the Southern 
voters. The hills are still heavily wooded, as was the whole 
face of the country as far as central Texas, when it was 
first opened up by Europeans. The hill region is also the 
theater of most of the manufacturing in the South, and 
especially of the cotton mills. 

Below the hills is a stretch of land, much of it allu- 
vial, extending from lower North Carolina to central 
Texas, which is the most characteristic part of the South, 
because it is the approved area of cotton planting, the site 
of great plantations, and the home of the densest negro 
population. The central part of it is commonly called 
The Black Belt originally because of the color of the soil, 
more recently as a tribute to the color of the tillers of the 

21 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

soil, for here may be found counties in which the Negroes 
are ten to one, and areas in which they are a hundred to 
one. It includes some prosperous cities, like Montgomery 
and Shreveport, and many thriving and increasing towns; 
but it is preeminently an agricultural region, in which is 
to be settled the momentous question whether the Negro 
is to stay on the land, and can progress as an agricultural 
laborer. 

The seacoast, along the Atlantic and Gulf, is again 
different from the Black Belt. It abounds in islands, some 
of which, especially the Sea Islands of South Carolina 
and Georgia, present the most interesting negro condi- 
tions to be found in the South. In this strip lie also the 
Southern ports, of which the principal ones are Norfolk, 
Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Brunswick, Jackson- 
ville, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston. 
With the exception of Atlanta, Montgomery, Birmingham, 
and Memphis, and the Texan cities, this list includes 
nearly all the populous cities of the Lower South. The 
ports are supported not from the productions of their 
neighborhood, but as out-ports from the interior. Three of 
them. Savannah, New Orleans, and Galveston, have a large 
European commerce; the others depend upon the coasting 
trade, the fruit industry, and the beginnings of the com- 
merce to the Isthmus of Panama, which everybody in the 
South expects is to become enormous. 

In one respect the Southland and the Northland were 
originally alike, namely, that they were both carpeted with 
a growth of heavy timber, the pine and its brethren in 
some localities, hard woods in others. Here a divergence 
has come about which has many effects on the South; by 
1860, outside the mountains, there was little uncleared 
land in the North, while most of the hill region, and large 

22 



THE SOUTHLAND 

parts of the Black Belt and coast, in the South were still 
untouched by the ax. In the last twenty-five years great 
inroads have been made on the Southern forests, and clear- 
ing is going on everywhere on a large scale. Nevertheless, 
a very considerable proportion of the Southern Whites and 
many Negroes still live in the woods, and have retained 
some of the habits of the frontier. Population is com- 
monly sparse; pretentious names of villages on the map 
prove to mark hamlets of two or three houses; nearly all 
the country churches are simply set down at crossroads, 
as are the schoolhouses and mournful little cemeteries. 
The good effects of frontier life are there, genuine democ- 
racy, neighborhood feeling, hospitality, courage, and hon- 
esty; but along with them are seen the drawbacks of the 
frontier: ignorance, uncouthness, boisterousness, lawless- 
ness, a lack of enterprise, and contempt for the experience 
of older communities. 

One of the characteristics not only of the lower classes, 
but of all sections of the South, is the love of open-air life ; 
the commonest thing on the roads in any part of the South 
is the man with a sporting gun, and a frequent sight is 
a pack of dogs escorting men on horseback who are going 
out to beat up deer. In some parts of the back country and 
in many parts of the Black Belt the roads are undrivable 
several months of the year, and people have to find their 
way on horseback. So common is the habit of horseback 
riding that a mountain girl to whom a Northern lady 
lent a book on etiquette returned it with the remark: 
" Hit seems a right smart sort of a book, but hit is so 
simple ; why, hit tells you how to sit on a horse ! " As will 
be seen in the next chapter, the frontier is ceasing to be, 
but many of its consequences will long be left impressed 
upon Southern character. Meanwhile the woods are turn- 

23 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ing into dollars, and a farming community is emerging 
not unlike that of the hill regions of western Pennsylvania 
or southern Ohio. 

The physical respects in which the South most differs 
from the North are its climate and its products. The 
South enjoys an unusual combination of climatic condi- 
tions; it is a subtropical country in which can be raised 
cotton, rice, sugar, yams, and citrous fruits; it is abun- 
dantly watered with copious rainfall and consequent 
streams ; at the same time, it is subject to occasional frosts 
which, however destructive of the hopes of orange growers, 
are supposed to be favorable to cotton. Not one of the 
Southern crops is a monopoly, even in the United States; 
they are raising cotton and oranges in California, rice in 
the Philippines, sugar in Porto Rico, and tobacco in Con- 
necticut; but the South is better fitted for these staples 
than any other section of the Union, and in addition can 
raise every Northern crop, except maple sugar, including 
corn, oats, buckwheat, considerable quantities of wheat, 
barley, rye, and garden fruits. Every year trucking — that 
is, the raising of vegetables — grows more important in the 
South ; and Texas still remains a great cattle state. There 
is, however, little dairying anywhere, and it cannot be too 
clearly kept in mind that the great agricultural staple, the 
dramatic center of Southern life, is *^^ making cotton." 

Though agriculture is the predominant interest in the 
South, it is coming forward rapidly in other pursuits, and 
is putting an end to differences which for near a century 
have marked off the two sections. Down to the Civil War 
the South hardly touched its subterranean wealth in coal 
and iron, and knew nothing of its petroleum or its stores 
of phosphate rock. Mining has now become a gieat in- 
dustry, especially in Alabama, and the states north and 

24 



THE SOUTHLAND 

northwestward to Virginia. The manufacture of iron has 
kept pace, and indeed has stimulated the development of 
the mines; and Birmingham is one of the world's centers 
in the iron trade. Cotton mills also have sprung up ; and, 
as will be shown later, think they are disputing the su- 
premacy of New England. Though the Black Belt shares 
little in these industries, or in the city building which 
comes along with them, it has two local industries, namely, 
the ginning of cotton and the manufacture of cotton-seed 
oil, together with a large fertilizer industry. 

The South is not without drawbacks such as all over 
the world gfre the penalty for the fruitfulness of semi- 
tropical regions. While, with the exception of the lower 
Mississippi, perhaps no day in the summer is as hot as 
some New York days, the heat in the Lower South is 
steady and unyielding; and though the Negroes and white 
laborers keep on with little interruption and sunstrokes are 
almost unknown, the heat affects the powers, at least of 
the Whites, to give their best service. Colleges and schools 
find it harder to keep up systematic study throughout the 
academic year than in similar Northern institutions. 

The South is much more infested by poisonous snakes, 
ticks, fleas, and other like pests than the North, and 
though the climate is so favorable for an all-the-year-round 
outdoor life these creatures put some limitations on free 
movement. The low country also abounds in swamps, 
many of them miles in extent, which if drained might 
make the most fertile soil in the world; but, as they lie, 
are haunts of mosquitoes, and therefore of malaria. Deaths 
by malarial fever, which are almost unknown in the North, 
mount up to some hundreds in Southern cities, and in 
the lowlands, particularly of the Mississippi and the Sea 
Islands, every white new-comer must pay the penalty of 

25 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

fever before he can live comfortably. The people accept 
these drawbacks good-humoredly and often ignore them, 
but they make life different from that of most parts of 
the North. 

On the other hand, the rivers of the South, flowing 
from the wide extended mountains with their abundant 
rainfall, make a series of abundant water powers. In the 
upper mountains there are a few waterfalls of a height 
from twenty to two hundred feet, but the great source of 
power is where the considerable streams reach the " fall 
line," below which they run unimpeded to the sea. Places 
like Spartanburg and Columbia in South Carolina, and 
Augusta and Qolumbus in Georgia, have large powers 
which are making them great manufacturing centers. No 
part of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains 
is so rich in undeveloped water powers as is the South. 

This prosperity extends also to the smaller cities which 
are now springing up in profusion throughout the South. 
Even in the Black Belt there are centers of local trade; 
and forwarding points like Monroe in Louisiana, Green- 
ville in Mississippi, and Americus in Georgia, are concen- 
trators of accumulating wealth and also of new means of 
education and refinement. In this respect, as in many 
others, the South is going through the experience of the 
Northwestern states forty years ago; and although its 
urban population is not likely ever to be so large in pro- 
portion as in those states, a change is coming over the 
habits of thought and the means of livelihood of the whole 
Southern people. 

In Southern cities large and small, new and old, the 
visitor is attracted by the excellent architectural taste of 
most of the public buildings, of many of the new hotels 
and modern business blocks, and of the stately colonnaded 

26 



THE SOUTHLAND 

private houses. Texas boasts a superb capitol at Austin, 
one of the most notable buildings of the country, which 
will perhaps be thought abnormal in some parts of the 
North, since it was built without jobber}^ and brought with 
it no train of criminal suits against the state officers who 
supervised its erection. The less progressive state of Mis- 
sissippi has a new marble capitol at Jackson, which is as 
attractive as the beautiful statehouse at Providence. The 
same sense of proportion and dignity is shown in many 
smaller places, such as Opelika, Alabama, or Shreveport, 
Louisiana, which contain beautiful churches and county 
buildings appropriate and dignified. 

The cities in many ways affect the white race, chiefly 
for the better; they furnish the appliances of intellectual 
growth, tolerable common schools, public high schools, pub- 
lic libraries, and a body of educated and thinking people. 
In the cities are found most of the new business and pro- 
fessional class who are doing much to rejuvenate the 
South. The interior cities much more than in former 
times are centers for the planting areas in their neighbor- 
hood; and through the cities are promoted those relations 
of place with place, of state with state, of section with 
section, of nation with nation, which broaden human life. 
Unfortunately in the cities, although their negro popula- 
tion is less in proportion than in the open country, the race 
feeling is bitter; and some of the most serious race dis- 
turbances during the last twenty years have been in large 
places; although the presence of a police force ought to 
keep such trouble in check. 

Still the South remains a rural community. Leaving 

out of account Louisville, Baltimore, and St. Louis, which, 

although within the boundaries of slave-holding states, 

were built up chiefly by middle-state or western state 

3 27 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

trade, the ante-bellum South contained only three notable 
cities: Richmond, Charleston, and New Orleans. As late 
as 1880 out of eight million people in the lower South 
only half a million lived in cities of eight thousand in- 
habitants and upward. In 1900, though a third of the 
people of the whole United States lived in cities, the urban 
population of the states extending from South Carolina 
to Texas was only about a ninth. Since that time the 
cities have been going forward more rapidly ; but the drift 
out of the open country is less marked than the similar 
movement in the Northern states, and the influence of 
foreign immigration is negligible. 

Nevertheless the cities have become a distinct feature 
of the New South ; and their healthy growth is one of the 
most hopeful tokens of prosperity. The largest is of 
course New Orleans, which has now passed the three hun- 
dred thousand mark and, in the estimation of its people, 
is on the way to surpass New York City. What else does 
it mean when the Southern port in one year ships more 
wheat than the Northern? But New Orleans is only the 
fourteenth in size of the American cities, and the Lower 
South has only one other, Atlanta, which goes into the list 
of the fifty largest cities of the Union. 

Though these figures show conclusively that the South 
is not an urban region, they do not set forth the activity, 
the civic life, and the prospective growth of the Southern 
cities. Charleston is still the most attractive place of pil- 
grimage on the North American continent, beautiful in 
situation, romantic in association, abounding in people of 
mind, and much more active in a business way than the 
world supposes; Savannah is a seaport, with a few inci- 
dental manufactures, but one of the busiest places on the 
Atlantic coast; Mobile has become metropolitan in its 

28 



THE SOUTHLAND 

handsome buildings, and in a spirit of enterprise which 
the Yankees have not always been willing to admit to be 
a Southern trait. Atlanta is the clearing house of many 
financial enterprises, such as the great life insurance com- 
panies and trust companies, and has become a wholesale 
center. While three other interior cities of this region, 
Columbia, Montgomery, and Birmingham, are among the 
active and progressive places of the country. In Texas 
there is certain to be a large urban population, and Hous- 
ton, San Antonio, and Dallas have not yet decided among 
themselves which is to be the Chicago of the South. 



CHAPTER III 

THE POOR WHITE 

THE broad and beautiful Southland is peopled by 
about thirty million human beings (26,000,000 in 
1900), who constitute the " South " as a community 
conscious of a life separate in many respects from that of 
the North. What is there in these thirty millions which 
sets them apart? First of all is the sharp division into 
two races — two thirds of the people Whites and one third 
Negroes, which in uncounted open and obscure ways makes 
the South unlike any other country in the world. In the 
second place account must be taken of the subdivision of 
the white people into social and economic classes — a divi- 
sion common in all lands, but peculiar in the South be- 
cause of the relations of the strata to each other. 

An analysis of the elements of white population may 
begin with the less prosperous and progressive portion 
commonly called the Poor Whites. As used in the South 
the term means lowlanders; and it is necessary to set off 
for separate treatment the mountaineers, who are, if not 
typical Southerners, at least unlike anything in the North. 
No other inhabitants of the United States are so near the 
eigliteenth century as the people to whom an observer has 
given the name of " Our contemporary ancestors." For 
nowhere else in the United States is there a distinct 
mountain people. The New England mountaineers live 

30 



THE POOR WHITE 

nowhere higher than 1,500 feet above the sea, and have 
no traits which mark them from their neighbors in the 
lower lands; in the Rocky Mountains the population is 
chiefly made up of miners; the Sierra Nevadas are little 
peopled; in the South alone, where some elevated valleys 
have been settled for two hundred years, is there an Amer- 
ican mountain folk, with a local dialect and social system 
and character. 

The mountains and their inhabitants are a numerous 
and significant part of the population in all the upper 
tier of the Southern States, including Oklahoma; and 
though they are much less numerous in the lower South, 
they furnish a large body of voters, and their slow prog- 
ress is in itself a difficult problem. The Appalachian 
range, from Canada to Alabama, is made up of belts of 
parallel ridges ; in a few places, such as Mount Washington 
in New Hampshire, and Mount Mitchell in North Caro- 
lina, they rise above 6,000 feet, but they include com- 
paratively few elevations over 3,000 feet, and no lofty 
plateaus. Between the ridges and in pockets or coves 
of the mountains are lands that are easily cultivated, and 
in many places the mountains, when cleared, are fertile 
to their summits. The scenic culmination of the Ap- 
palachians is Blowing Rock in North Carolina, 3,500 
feet above the sea, where the rifleman without stirring 
from one spot may drop his bullets into the Catawba flow- 
ing into the Atlantic, the New, which is a head water 
of the Ohio, and the Watauga, a branch of the Tennessee. 
Above this spot rises, 3,000 feet higher, the mass of Grand- 
father's Mountain; and below is an enchanting series of 
mountains, range after range, breaking off to the eastern 
foothills. 

Within the Appalachians, south of Pennsylvania, dwell 
31 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

about two and a half million people of whom but a few 
thousands are of African or European birth. These are 
true Americans, if there are any, for they are the descend- 
ants of people who were already in the country as much 
as a century and a half ago. In a Kentucky churchyard 
may be found such names as Lucinda Gentry, John Kin- 
dred, Simeon Skinner, and William Tudor. Side by side 
stand Scotch-Irish names, for many of that stock drifted 
southwestward from Pennsylvania into these mountains; 
and in the oldest burying ground, on the site of Daniel 
Boone's Watauga settlement, the first interment seems to 
have been that of a German. Just as in central Pennsyl- 
vania, and the Valley of Virginia, the English, Scotch- 
Irish, and Pennsylvania Dutch were intermingled. It is 
an error to suppose that these highlanders are descended 
from the riffraff of the colonial South; they have been 
crowded back into the unfavorable parts of the mountains 
because, as the population increased, there was a lack of 
good land; and the least vigorous and ambitious of them, 
though sons or grandsons of stalwart men, have been 
obliged to accept the worst opportunities. 

The life of the Mountain Whites is not very unlike 
that of New England in the seventeenth century. New 
York in the eighteenth, and Minnesota in the nineteenth 
century. The people are self-sustaining in that they build 
their own houses, raise their own food, and make their 
own clothing. There have been instances where in the 
early morning a sheep was trotting about wearing a pelt 
which in the evening a mountaineer was wearing, it having 
been sheared, spun, woven, dyed, cut, made, and unfitted 
in that one day. Abraham Lincoln, as a boy in Indiana 
and a young man in Illinois, lived the same kind of life 
that these people are now going through; for here is the 

32 



THE POOR WHITE 

last refuge of the American frontier. These conditions 
seem not in themselves barbarous, for there are still thou- 
sands of Northern people who in childhood inhabited in- 
telligent and well-to-do communities with good schools, 
in which most of the families still made their own soap 
and sugar, smoked their own hams, molded their own 
candles, and dyed their own cloth, where the great spin- 
ning-wheel still turned and the little wheel whirred. 

The Mountain Whites, however, are more than primi- 
tive or even colonial, they are early English; at least 
among them are still sung and handed down from grand- 
mother to child Elizabethan ballads. Lord Thomas still 
hies him to his mother to know 

Whether I shall marry fair Elender, 
Or bring the brown girl home. 

Local bards also compose for themselves such stirring 
ditties as " Sourwood Mounting." 

Chickens a-crowin' in the sourwood mountain, 

Ho-de-ing-dang, diddle-lal-la-da. 
So many pretty girls I can't count 'em, 

Ho-de-ing-dang, diddle-lal-la-da. 

My true love lives up in the head of a holler. 
She won't come and I won't call 'er. 

My true love, she's a black-eyed daisy. 
If I don't get her, I'll go crazy. 

The most unfavorable mountain conditions are fairly 
illustrated by eastern Kentucky, a veritable back country. 
Along the roads the traveler passes a number of one- 

33 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

room houses, without glass windows, and is told many 
tales of the irregular or no-family life of the people. Per- 
haps along a creek he chances on a traditional Mountain 
White family, such as Porte Crayon drew fifty years ago, 
when these people were first described as a curiosity. Be- 
low a dirty and ill-favored house, down under the bank 
on the shingle near the river, sits a family of five people, 
all ill-clothed and unclean; a blear-eyed old woman, a 
younger woman with a mass of tangled red hair hanging 
about her shoulders, indubitably suckling a baby; a little 
girl with the same auburn evidence of Scotch ancestry; 
a boy, and a younger child, all gathered about a fire made 
among some bricks, surrounding a couple of iron sauce- 
pans, in which is a dirty mixture looking like mud, but 
probably warmed-up sorghum syrup, which, with a few 
pieces of corn pone, makes their breakfast. A counter- 
balance to the squalor is the plump and pretty girls that 
appear all along the way, with the usual mountain head- 
dress of the sunbonnet, perched at a killing angle. Such 
people have their own peculiarities of speech like the 
mountain woman's characterization of a forlorn country- 
seat : " Warn't hit the nighest ter nowhar uv ary place 
ever you's at ? " 

The miserable family described above are a fair type 
of what a writer on the subject calls the " submerged 
tenth among the mountaineers " ; but they belong to the 
lowest type, to which those who know them best give no 
favorable character; they live in the remotest parts of the 
mountains, in the rudest cabins, with the smallest provi- 
sion of accumulated food. Most of them are illiterate and 
more than correspondingly ignorant. Some of them had 
Indian ancestors and a few bear evidences of negro blood. 
The so-called " mountain-boomer," says an observer, " has 

34 



THE POOR WHITE 

little self-respect and no self-reliance. ... So long as his 
corn pile lasts the ^ cracker ' lives in contentment, feast- 
ing on a sort of hoe cake made of grated corn meal mixed 
with salt and water and baked before the hoi coals, with 
addition of what game the forest furnishes him when he 
can get up the energy to go out and shoot or trap it. 
. . . The irregularities of their moral lives cause them 
no sense of shame. . . . But, notwithstanding these low 
moral conceptions, they are of an intense religious excit- 
ability. . . . They license and ordain their own preachers, 
who are no more intelligent than they are themselves, but 
who are distinguished by special ability in getting people 
' shouting happy,' or in ' shaking the sinner over the 
smoking fires of hell until he gets religion.' " They are all 
users of tobacco — men, women, and children. They smoke 
and chew and " dip snuff.'' . . . Bathing is unknown among 
them. . . . When a garment is put on once it is there to 
stay until it falls to pieces. The washtub is practically as 
little known among them as the bathtub. . . . 

The same authority has abundant praise for the better 
type of the mountaineer, who loves the open-air life, cares 
nothing for luxury, and '^ has raised the largest average 
families in America upon the most sterile of ' upright ' and 
stony farms, farms the very sight of which would make 
an Indiana farmer sick with nervous prostration. He 
has sent his sons out to be leaders of men in all the 
industries and activities in every part of our country." 

If there were no improvement in the mountaineer who 
remains on his land, the South would rue it ; but in some 
parts of the mountains one may have such experiences as 
those of the writer in 1907 on a pedestrian journey across 
the mountains of North Carolina, among what has been 
supposed to be the most primitive and least hopeful peo- 

35 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

pie in the Southern mountains. He found beside a lonely 
creek near the little village of Sugar Grove the house of 
the son of a Swiss immigrant, the best one for many miles. 
It is also the Telephone Exchange in that remote region. 
The stranger is received hospitably, and sits down to a meal 
of a dozen good dishes, including the traditional five kinds 
of sauce. He is not required to sleep in the Telephone 
Exchange itself, which is the living room of the family 
occupied by the husband, wife, two babies, two older chil- 
dren squabbling in a trundle bed, and a space for two 
more, but receives a clean and comfortable room to him- 
self. The host is justly proud that Sugar Grove has a good 
two-story school house put up by the labor of the people 
of the neighborhood, who tax themselves to increase the 
school term from the four months supported by the State 
fund to eight months. In that valley the people are as 
prosperous as in the average Maine village, and for 
much the same reason ; it is lumber that has brought money 
and prosperity; for railroads were not built thither till 
the lumber was worth so much that the owners received 
considerable sums in cash, and the thrifty ones have saved 
it. A few nights later was tested the hospitality of a 
young couple newly married, who were running a little 
mill. They furnished a good room, a capital supper of 
eggs, bacon, good coffee, corn pone, and the equally de- 
licious wheat pone, and arose in the dark so as to favor 
a five-o'clock departure ; and they " allowed " that the en- 
tertainment was worth about twenty-five cents. 

What has been done in Boone County, N. C, is like- 
ly to be done in most of the other mountains sooner 
or later; the coal and the timber draw the railroad, estab- 
lish the village, make possible the school and start the 
community upward; but the mountaineers are slow to 

36 



THE POOR WHITE 

move, and the boarding schools, established partly by 
Northerners, are a godsend to the people. When in one 
such school mustering a hundred and fifty boys one hundred 
and thirty "guns'^ (that is, pistols) are turned over to 
the principal upon request, it is clear that the mountain- 
eers need a new standard of personal relations. As you 
ride through parts of Kentucky, people point out to you 
where Bill Adams lay in wait to kill Sam Skinner last 
fall; or the house of the man who has killed two men and 
never got a scratch yet. 

There is good in these mountain people, there is hope, 
there is potentiality of business man and college president. 
Take, for example, the poor mountain boy who, on a trip 
across the mountains with a fellow Kentuckian, seems to 
be reading something when he thinks he is not observed, 
and on closer inquiry reluctantly admits that it is a vol- 
ume of poetry which some one had left at the house. 
" Hit's Robert Burns's poems ; I like them because it seems 
to me they are written for people like us. Do you know 
who I like best in those poems ? It is that ^ Highland 
Mary.'-" 

The reason for hope in the future of the Mountain 
Whites is that they are going through a process which has 
been shared at one time or another by all the country east 
of the Rocky Mountains. The Southern mountaineers are 
the remnant of the many communities of frontiersmen 
who cleared the forests, fought the Indians, built the first 
homes, and lived in a primitive fashion. Much of the 
mountains is still in the colonial condition, but railroads, 
schools, and cities are powerful civilizing agents, and a 
people of so much native vigor may be expected in course 
of no long time to take their place alongside their breth- 
ren of the lowlands. The more prosperous South is too 

37 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

little interested in these people, and is doing little direct 
civilizing work among them, in many districts leaving that 
task to be performed by schools founded by Northerners. 
But there are some good state schools among them, as, for 
instance, that at Boonesboro', N. C; and numerous small 
colleges mostly founded before the Civil War. 

The Mountain Whites ought not to be confused with 
the Poor Whites of the lowlands. Although there are 
many similarities of origin and life, the main difference is 
that the mountaineers have almost no Negroes among them 
and are therefore nearly free from the difficulties of the 
race problem. In the lowlands as in the mountains, men 
whose fathers had settled on rich lands, as the country 
developed were unable to compete with their more alert 
and successful neighbors, who were always ready to outbid 
them for land or slaves ; therefore they sold out and moved 
back into the poor lands in the lowlands, or into the belt 
of thin soil lying between the Piedmont and the low 
country. Hence the contemptuous names applied to them 
by the planting class — " Tar Heels ^' in North Carolina ; 
" Sand Hillers " in South Carolina ; " Crackers " in Geor- 
gia ; " Clay Eaters '^ in Alabama ; " Eed Necks " in Arkan- 
sas ; " Hill Billies " in Mississippi ; and " Mean Whites," 
"White Trash," and "No 'Count" everywhere. 

These so-called Poor Whites are to be found in every 
state in the South. They are the most numerous element 
in the Southern population. They are the people who are 
brought into the closest personal relations with the Ne- 
groes. A survey of their conditions and prospects is there- 
fore essential for any clear understanding of the race 
question. 

The present dominant position of the Poor Wliites is 
different from that of their predecessors in slavery times. 

38 



THE POOR WHITE 

• 
Distant from the highways of trade, having no crop which 

they could exchange for store goods, satisfied with primi- 
tive conditions from which almost none of them emerged, 
the Poor Whites then simply vegetated. With them the 
negro question was not pressing, for they had little per- 
sonal relation with the rich planters, even when they lived 
in their neighborhood; and the free Negroes who were 
crowded back like themselves on poor lands were too few 
and too feeble to arouse animosity. Mountain people 
have little prejudice against Negroes: but in the hills and 
lowlands, where the two races live side by side, where the 
free black was little poorer than his white neighbor, the 
slave on a notable plantation felt himself quite superior 
to the Poor Whites, who in turn furnished most of the 
overseer class, and had their own opportunities of teaching 
how much better any white man was than any nigger. 

The isolation of these Poor Whites was one if the 
greatest misfortunes of ante-bellum times: it was not 
wholly caused by slavery, but was aggravated because the 
slave owner considered himself in a class apart from the 
man who had nothing but a poor little farm. " Joyce," 
said a Northecn officer to a Poor Wliite in Kentucky forty 
years ago, '^ what do you think this war is about ? " "I 
reckon that you'uns has come down to take the niggers 
away from we'uns." " Jo3'ce, did you ever own a nigger ? " 
" No." " Any of your family ever own a nigger ? " " No, 
sir." " Did you ever expect to own a nigger ? " "I reckon 
not." " Which did the people that did own niggers like 
best, you or the nigger ? " " Well, 'twas this away. If a 
planter came along and met a nigger, he'd say, ^ Howdy, 
Pomp ! How's the old massa, and how's the young massa, 
and how's the old missus, and how's the young missus ? ' 
But if he met me he'd say, ' Hullo, Joyce, is that you ? ' " 

39 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

• 
But Joyce and his kind went into the Confederate 

army of which they furnished most of the rank and file, 
and followed Marse Robert uncomplainingly to the bitter 
end ; and they had a good sound, logical reason for fighting 
what was apparently the quarrel of their planter neigh- 
bor. A white man was always a white man, and as long 
as slavery endured, the poorest and most ignorant of the 
white race could always feel that he had something to look 
down upon, that he belonged to the lords of the soil. In 
the war he was blindly and unconsciously fighting for the 
caste of white men, and could not be brought to realize 
that slavery helped to keep him where he was, without 
education for his children, without opportunities for em- 
ployment, without that ambition for white paint and 
green blinds which has done so much to raise the 
Northern settler. Though a voter, and a possible candi- 
date for office, he was accustomed to accept the candidates 
set up by the slave-holding aristocracy. Stump speakers 
flattered him and Fourth-of-July orators explained to him 
the blessings of a republican government. 

The Poor White, in his lowest days, had a right to feel 
that he was a political person of consequence, for did he 
not furnish three presidents of the United States? Jack- 
son was born a Poor White, and had some of the objection- 
able and most of the attractive qualities of those people; 
Andrew Johnson came from the upper Valley of the Ten- 
nessee; Abraham Lincoln was a Poor White, the son of a 
shiftless Kentucky farmer. Materially the Poor Whites 
contributed little to the community, except by clearing 
the land, and they took care that that process should not 
go uncomfortably far. 

Let a Southern writer describe his own ante-bellum 
neighbors: "These folk of unmixed English stock could 

40 



THE POOR WHITE 

not cook ; but held fast to a primitive and violent religion, 
all believers expecting to go to heaven. What, therefore, 
did earthly poverty matter ? They were determined not to 
pay more taxes. They were suspicious of all proposed 
changes; and to have a school or a good school, would 
be a violent change. They were 'the happiest and most 
fortunate people on the face of the globe.' Why should 
they not be content ? . . . holding fast to the notion that they 
are a part of a long-settled life; fixed in their ways; un- 
thinking and standing still ; . . . unaware of their own dis- 
comfort; ignorant of the world about them and of what 
invention, ingenuity, industry, and prosperity have brought 
to their fellows, and too proud or too weak to care to learn 
these things." 

What is the present condition of the Poor White? 
The greater number of white rural families own their 
farms, though there is a considerable class of renters; and 
they till them in the wasteful and haphazard fashion of 
the frontier. Their stock is poor and scanty, except that 
they love a good horse. Most of their food except sugar 
they raise on their own places, and up to a few years ago 
they were clad in homespun. There are still areas such as 
southern Arkansas and northern Florida in which the life 
of the Poor Whites has little changed in half a century. 

Otherwise, if one now seeks to find this primitive and 
sordid life in the South, he will need to search a long 
time. After the Civil War the disbanded soldiers went 
back to their cabins, and for a time resumed their old 
habits, but at present they are undergoing a great and sig- 
nificant change. Though there are five or six millions 
of Poor Whites scattered through the South, especially in 
the remote hill country, for the most part away from the 
rich cotton lands and the great plantations, you may liter- 

41 



THE SOUTHERN SaUTH 

ally travel a thousand miles through the back country 
without finding a single county in which they do not show 
a distinct uplift. Take a specific example. On January 
2, 1908, on a steamer making its way up the Mississippi 
River, was a family of typical Poor Whites, undersized, ill- 
fed, unshaven, anaemic, unprogressive, moving witli their 
household gods, the only deck passengers among the Ne- 
groes in the engine room. On inquiring into the case, it 
came out that they could no longer afford to pay the rent on 
the tenant farm which they had occupied for several years. 
" How do you expect to get started on a new farm ? " 
" Oh, we've got some stock. You see it right over there 
on the deck. Seven head of cows." "That isn't your 
wagon, I suppose, that good painted wagon ? " " Oh, yes, 
that's our wagon, and them's our horses, three of 'em." 
" Is that pile of furniture and household goods yours 
too ? " " Yes, that plunder's ours ; we've got everything 
with us. You see I want to take my little boys where they 
can have some schooling." And this was the lazy, apa- 
thetic, and hopeless Poor White ! He had more property 
than the average of small Southern farmers, and was 
moving just as the Iowa man moves to Nebraska, and the 
Nebraska man to Idaho, because full of that determination 
to give his children a better chance than he had himself, 
which is one of the main props of civilization. 

Wherever the abject Poor White may be, a personal 
search shows that he is not in the hill country of Louisiana, 
Mississippi, or Alabama, nor in the enormous piney woods 
district of southern Alabama and Georgia. Visit Coosa 
County, Alabama, supposed to be as near the head waters 
of Bitter Creek as you can get, lay out a route which will 
carry you through by-roads, across farms, and into coves 
where even a drummer is a novelty. You will find many 

42 



THE POOR WHITE 

poor people living in cabins which could not be let to a 
city tenant if the sanitary inspectors knew it, some of 
them in one-room houses, with a puncheon floor, made of 
split logs ; with log walls chinked with clay and moss, with 
a firestead of baked clay, and a cob chimney. Around that 
fire all the family cooking is carried on; the room is 
nearly filled up with bedsteads and chests or trunks, a few 
pictures, chiefly crude advertising posters, and not enough 
chairs to seat the family. 

That is the way perhaps a fifth of the hill Whites live, 
but four fifths of them are in better conditions. The one- 
room cabins have given way to larger houses, a favorite, 
though by no means a type, being the double house with 
the " hall " or open passage from back to front ; besides the 
two rooms there will probably be a lean-to, and perhaps ad- 
ditional rooms built on ; and very likely a separate kitchen, 
used also as a dining room. Instead of the three to twelve 
little out-buildings scattered about, decent shelters begin 
to appear for the stock, and tight houses for tools and 
utensils. 

Of the morals of these people it is difficult for a 
stranger to judge, but the intimate family life in the better 
cabins is in every way decorous. The pride of the family 
is the splendid patchwork bed quilt, with magnificent pat- 
terns, representing anything from the Field of the Cloth 
of Gold to the solar system. The children, who may be 
anywhere from two to fifteen in number, are civil, the 
spirit of the family hospitable ; and though there are none 
of the books and newspapers which help to furnish both 
the sitting room and the brains of the Northern farmer's 
family, they are a hopeful people. Some embarrassing 
questions arise when there are nine people, old and young, 
sleeping in the same room, but even in the one-room 
4 43 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

houses the people commonly have ways of disposing of 
themselves which are entirely decent. The poorest fam- 
ilies live on " hog and hominy," a locution which does not 
exclude the invariable salaratus biscuit, corn pone, and real 
or alleged coffee and string beans. 

It is hardly fair to compare these people, who are at 
best only ten or twenty years away from the frontier, with 
New Englanders or Middle States or far Western farmers. 
In the Southern climate people get on with smaller houses, 
fewer fireplaces and stoves, and more ventilation through 
the walls. There is little necessity for large farm build- 
ings, and the country is too rough to use much farm ma- 
chinery. Their outside wants are simple — coffee, sugar, 
or the excellent cane-syrup, clothing (inasmuch as they 
no longer make their own), wagons and utensils; these 
can all be bought with their cotton, and they raise their 
own corn and "meat" (pork). In comparison with the 
North a fair standard would be to set a dozen of the 
Coosa County houses alongside a mining village in Penn- 
sylvania, and the advantage of cleanliness, decency, and 
thrift would show itself on the Southern side. 

Those people are rising; though still alarmingly be- 
hind, both in education and in a sense of the need of 
education. Unusually well-to-do farmers may be found 
who boast that they are illiterate, and who will not send 
their children steadily to good schools in the neighbor- 
hood ; but they are learning one of the first lessons of up- 
lift, namely, that the preparation for later comfort is to 
save money. Saving means work, and perhaps the secret 
of the undoubted improvement of the Poor Whites is that 
there is work that they can do, plenty of it at good wages. 
That is a marvelous difference from slavery times, when 
there was nothing going on in their region except farm- 

44 



THE POOR WHITE 

ing, and it was thought ignoble to work on anybody else's 
farm, for that was what niggers did. Nowadays some 
Whites are tenants or laborers on large plantations. Near 
Monroe, La., for instance, is a plantation carried on by 
Acadians brought up from lower Louisiana, with the hope 
that they will like it and save money enough to buy up the 
land in small parcels. There are plantations on which 
white tenants come into houses just vacated by negro 
tenants, on the same terms as the previous occupants; the 
women working in the fields, precisely as the Negroes do; 
there are plantations almost wholly manned by white ten- 
ants. But there are other more attractive employments, 
and it is so easy for the white man to buy land that there 
is no likelihood of the growth of a class of white agricul- 
tural laborers in the South. 

The son of the Poor White farmer, or the farmer him- 
self, if he finds it hard to make things go, can usually 
find employment in his own neighborhood, or at no great 
distance. Large forces of men are employed in clearing 
new land, a process which is going on in the hills, in the 
piney woods, and in the richest agricultural belt. Little 
sawmills are scattered widely, and the turpentine indus- 
try gives employment to thousands of people. Day wages 
have gone up till a dollar a day is easy to earn, and some- 
times more; and the wages of farm laborers have risen 
from the old eight or ten dollars a month to fifteen dol- 
lars a month and upward. The great lumber camps give 
employment to thousands of people, both white and black, 
and are on the whole demoralizing, for liquor there flows 
freely; and though families are encouraged to come, the 
life is irregular, and sawmill towns may suddenly decay. 

The great resource of the Poor White is work in 
the cotton mills, for which he furnishes almost the only 

45 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

available supply of the less highly skilled kinds of labor. 
Here the conditions are wholly different from those of half 
a century ago; he can find work every day for every 
healthy member of his family, and sometimes prefers add- 
ing up the wages of the women and children to making 
wages for himself. Whatever the drawbacks of the mill 
town, it has schools, the Sunday newspaper, and some con- 
tact with the outside world; and the man who really 
loves the farm may always return to it. 

Even in slavery times the ambitious Poor White could 
get out of his environment, and furnished many of the 
business and political leaders of his time; and there was 
a class of white farmers working their own land. That 
class still exists, though no longer set off so sharply from 
the ordinary Poor Whites, inasmuch as the lower element 
is approaching the higher. As an instance, take a farm- 
stead in Coosa County, Alabama, containing perhaps a 
hundred acres, and alongside the disused old house is a 
new and more comfortable one, flanked by a pump house; 
grouped near it are nine log outhouses, and one frame 
building intended for cotton seed. The front yard is 
beaten down flat, for it is very hard to make grass grow 
in the South near to houses ; but it is neat and reasonably 
tidy; in the foreground stands an old syrup pan with red 
stone chimney, and near by is the rude horse-mill used 
for grinding the cane. Such a farm is a fair type of 
the average place, but still better conditions may be seen 
in new houses of four and even six rooms, with the front 
yard fenced in, and a gate, and a big barn for the storage 
of hay, just such as you might find in southern Iowa. 

The evident uplift among the Poor AATiites in their own 
strongholds is only a part of the story; for ever since the 
Revolution there has been a drift of these people into the 

46 



THE POOR WHITE 

more promising conditions of southern Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, and the far West. If from the number of born 
South Carolinians now living in other states be subtracted 
the natives of other states now living in South Carolina, 
the State will still have contributed 179,000 to other com- 
munities. Georgia has lost 219,000, and there are similar 
though smaller drifts out of Alabama and Mississippi; 
while Texas counts more than 600,000 people born in other 
states, principally the South. Former Poor Whites and 
descendants of Poor Whites can be found in every North- 
western and Pacific state, and constitute a valuable ele- 
ment of population. The truth is, as the evidence adduced 
in this chapter proves, that the term " Poor Whites " is a 
misnomer; that a class of poor and backward people which 
has existed for decades in many parts of the South is now 
disappearing. There are poor farmers in every part of the 
South; but poor farmers can be found in every north- 
western state. The average of forehandedness and intelli- 
gent use of tools and machinery is less among the back 
country farmers in the South than in other parts of the 
Union; but there is such uplift and progress among them 
— particularly since the high price of cotton — that the 
Poor Whites are ceasing to be an element of the popula- 
tion that needs to be separately treated. 



CHAPTEE IV 



IMMIGRATION 



IN every other section of the United States the element 
of the population descended from English colonists is 
flanked by, and in some places submerged by, a body 
of European immigrants; and every state is penetrated by 
great numbers of people from other states. Considering 
that the South has contributed to other sections of the 
Union about two and a half millions of people, the return 
current from the North has been comparatively small. 
" Why is it," asks the Louisville Courier Journal, " that so 
few of these home-seekers come South where the lands are 
cheaper and better, where the climate is more congenial, 
and where it is much easier to live and become independent 
from the soil ? '' Among the inhabitants of the Southern 
States were enumerated in 1900 only 400,000 people born 
in the North, of whom 250,000 originated in the North- 
eastern states from Maine to Pennsylvania, and 150,000 
came from the Middle Western group extending from 
Ohio to Kansas; but this 400,000 people are so widely 
scattered that outside of Texas and Florida there are few 
groups of Northern people. Some farmers are said to be 
coming from the Northwestern states into tide-water Vir- 
ginia; others to Baldwin County, in southern Alabama; 
others to northern Mississippi ; and to Lake Charles, Louis- 
iana; chiefly with a view to the trucking industry. Two 

48 



IMMIGEATION 

or three communities made up wholly of Northern peo- 
ple can be mentioned, such as Thorsby in Alabama and 
Fitzgerald in Georgia, which last is apparently the only 
flourishing experiment of the kind. 

Of the 400,000 Northerners in the South the greater 
number are in the cities and manufacturing towns, as 
business men, bosses and skilled laborers in the mills, in 
professions and mechanical trades. As a rule they do not 
adhere to each other, and many of them seem to wish to 
hide their origin. Why is it that there is a flourishing 
Southern Club in New York, and smaller ones in other 
cities, yet no Northern club anywhere in the South ? The 
Southern explanation is that the Northerner who settles 
in the South, within a few weeks discovers that the con- 
victions of a lifetime on all Southern questions are with- 
out foundation ; and he takes on the color of the soil upon 
which he lives. If it be true that the Southern man and 
woman in the North continues to feel himself Southern 
to the end of his days, while the Northern man in the 
South tries to identify himself completely with the com- 
munity in which he means to stay permanently, perhaps 
there is some explanation other than the impregnability 
of the Southern position. 

The Southern emigrant to the North finds no door 
shut to him because he comes from elsewhere; his origin 
is interesting to the people he meets; and unless very 
violent in temper and abusive to the section of his adop- 
tion, he may criticise his home and set forth the superi- 
ority of the Southland without making enemies. The 
South, on the contrary, expects people who are to be 
elected to clubs and become full members of the community 
to agree with the majority; and on the negro question 
insists that all Whites stand together. While courteous to 

49 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

the occasional visitor, notwithstanding his presumed dif- 
ference of view, the South is not hospitable to those who 
plume themselves upon being Northern; and as a commu- 
nity has shown decided hostility to the Northern teachers 
and organizers of negro schools, and even of schools for 
the Poor Whites. The Northerner who stands out on the 
question of the Negro's rights not only has seven evenings 
of hot discussion upon his hands every week, but finds 
himself put into the category of the " nigger lover," which 
includes not only the white teachers of Negroes, but a 
President of the United States. 

Nevertheless, there is a strong Northern influence in 
the South, exercised partly through Southern men who 
have, either as students or as business men, become famil- 
iar with the North; partly through the Northern drum- 
mers; partly through Northern business and professional 
men, including many Northern teachers and college pro- 
fessors, who are scattered through the South, and who in 
general support the principle of the right of discussion 
and the privilege of differing from the majority, for which 
the best element in the South contests with vigor. 

Small as is the number of Northerners in the South, 
the number of aliens is not much larger. In the whole 
United States there were in 1900, 10,500,000 foreign-born, 
of whom only 727,000 were in the whole South ; while the 
lower South from North Carolina to Texas contained 303,- 
000, and the five states from South Carolina to Mississippi 
only 45,000. Of the 16,000,000 additional persons of 
foreign parentage in the Union the South had again 
1,500,000. That is, with a third of the total population 
of the country, the South contains about one eleventh 
of the foreigners and children of foreigners. These gen- 
eral figures may be enforced by the statistics of particular 

50 



IMMIGRATION 

cities. Baltimore and Boston have each a population 
rising 600,000; but in 1900 there were 69,000 foreigners 
in Baltimore against 197,000 in the Northern city. New 
Orleans and Milwaukee are not far apart in total num- 
bers, but Milwaukee had 90,000 foreigners to 30,000 in 
New Orleans. Atlanta, with a population of near 100,000, 
had only about 3,000 foreign-born people; Saint Paul with 
a similar population had 47,000. 

This condition and its causes go very far back. When 
immigration began on a large scale about 1820 the North- 
ern states were nearer to the old world, had better and 
more direct communication, and populous cities were al- 
ready established; hence the foreign current set that way. 
No doubt the immigrant disliked to go to a region where 
labor with the hands was thought to be menial, but his 
real objection to the South was not so much slavery as the 
lack of opportunity for progressive white people. After 
the Civil War cleared the way and the South began to 
develop its resources there was a demand for just such 
people as the foreign immigrants to work in sawmills 
and shops; and in addition they were eagerly coveted as 
a source of field labor to compete with and perhaps sup- 
plant the Negro. All the Northern states have encouraged 
and some have fostered immigration; and the South has 
recently reached out in the same direction, though with 
caution. As Senator Williams, of Mississippi, puts it: 
" Nor, last, would I neglect foreigners of the right types. 
Eesort would have to be had to them very largely because 
of the fact that our own country could not furnish immi- 
grants in sufficient numbers.'' 

During the last twenty years some systematic effort 
has been made to attract foreigners to the South; some 
of the Southern railroads, notably the Illinois Central, 

51 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

have attempted to stimulate immigi-ation, in order to fill 
up the vacant lands and increase railroad business. Pri- 
vate agencies are at work in Northern cities, which try to 
direct immigrants southward. Immigration societies have 
been formed, and a great effort was made in 1907 to induce 
a current of immigration. A Southern State Immigration 
Commission was established under the chairmanship of 
the late Samuel Spencer, President of the Southern Rail- 
road, and there are several similar local societies. Fol- 
lowing an example originally set by some of the North- 
western states seventy years ago, several states appointed 
commissioners or bureaus of immigration, particularly 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. 
The most active of all these bodies is the State Immigra- 
tion Bureau of Louisiana, which has busily distributed 
Italians and Bulgarians through the State. The Federal 
Government has taken a hand in steering foreigners south- 
ward, through a bureau in New York which puts before 
newly arrived immigrants the opportunities of the South. 
By this bureau and by liberal and even strained construc- 
tion of the statutes the Federal authorities have aided in 
the effort to bring the South to the attention of the in- 
comer and to facilitate his distribution. 

In 1906 South Carolina took a part in the process by 
agreeing practically to act as the agent of the planters 
and mill owners of the state, who raised a fund of twenty 
thousand dollars which, to avoid the Federal statute 
against the coming in of immigrants under contract to 
find them work, was turned over to the State authorities. 
They thereupon made a contract with the North German 
Lloyd Steamship Company to import several immigrants 
whose passage was paid out of the fund. In consequence, 
in November, 1906, appeared in the harbor of Charleston 

52 



IMMIGEATION 

the steamer Wittekind, having on board 450 steerage pas- 
sengers, an arrival which was declared to be the first suc- 
cessful undertaking to promote foreign immigration 
from Europe to the South Atlantic section of the United 
States in half a century. These immigrants — 137 Bel- 
gians, 140 Austrians, and 160 Galicians — were feted by 
the Charleston people and triumphantly distributed 
throughout the State. Part of them were not mill hands 
at all ; others had been misinformed as to the scale of wages 
and conditions ; one of them thought it monstrous that he 
should have been a week in South Carolina without ever 
seeing a bottle of beer. They wrote home such accounts of 
their unhappiness that the steamship company declined 
to forward any more immigrants, and Mr. Gadsden was 
sent by the State as a special commissioner to Europe to 
investigate. He reported in 1907 that the people were 
writing home to say that they did not like their work or 
housing. He diagnosed the trouble as follows : " Our ef- 
forts have been almost entirely expended in inducing im- 
migrants to come to the South, and we have thought lit- 
tle or nothing of how the immigrant is to be treated after 
he has come in our midst; ... it seems to me that we 
have entirely overlooked our industrial conditions, namely, 
that the wage scale throughout the South is based on ne- 
gro labor, which means cheap labor . . . our attitude 
throughout the South to the white laborer will have to be 
materially altered before we can expect to have the immi- 
grant satisfied to remain as a laborer with us.^' 

The only considerable groups of foreigners living to- 
gether in the South are a small German colony in Charles- 
ton and a larger one in New Orleans, a body of Germans 
in central Texas (a settlement dating back to the Civil 
War), and a few thousand Italian laborers in the lower 

53 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

Mississippi valley who have been brought there chiefly 
through private agencies in New Orleans and New Yorli. 
Some Slavs have been introduced into the lower South 
where they are collectively known as " Bohunks " ; and a 
few efforts have been made to bring in the Chinese. 

For the slenderness of the immigrant movement there 
are two principal reasons : the first is that the South does 
not like immigrants, and the second is that the immigrants 
do not like the South. One constantly encounters a sharp 
hostility to foreigners of every kind. The Georgia Farmers' 
Union in 1907 unanimously voted against foreign immi- 
gration, because it would bring undesirable people who 
would compete with the Georgians for factory labor and 
would raise so much cotton that it would lower the price. 
A Texan lawyer in a Pullman car painted for the writer 
a gloomy picture of the unhappy condition of the North, 
which is obliged to accept " the scum of the earth " from 
foreign countries and is thereby overrun with Syrians, 
Russian Jews, and Sicilians, who are not capable of becom- 
ing American citizens and fill the slums of the cities; the 
South, in his judgment, was free from such difficulties. 
The Manufacturers' Record of Baltimore is fearful of 
" masses of elements living largely unto themselves, speak- 
ing foreign tongues and kept alien to the country through 
having no contact with its people and its institutions save 
only through their own leaders. Such an immigration, 
it is easily understood from experience in other parts of 
the country, might become a dangerous fester upon the 
body politic.'^ A correspondent of the Richmond Times 
Despatch objects to immigrants because they will prevent 
the reestablishment of the labor conditions which existed 
before the war, and will interfere with the plantation sys- 
tem ; and he especially deprecates any effort " to try any of 

54 



IMMIGRATION 

the races that have become inoculated with union notions, 
and who are so quick to overestimate their contributions 
to the success of the enterprises upon which they work and 
demand wages accordingly." 

Another argument is that of competition. As a South- 
ern writer puts it : " The temptation of cheap alien labor 
from abroad is obvious as one of the ways in which a 
home population may be dispossessed. When it ceases to 
fill the rank and file with its own sons ... it ceases to be 
master or possessor of the country." From another source 
the Negro is warned that : " When the European who has 
been used to hard work begins to make a bale and a half 
of cotton to where the negro makes but half a bale, . . . then 
the farm labor will pass from the hands of the negro 
forever." 

On this question of immigration, as on many other 
matters, there is a divergence between the responsible and 
the irresponsible Whites, or rather between the large prop- 
erty owners and people who look to the development of the 
whole section, and the small farmers and white laborers. 
The criticism of the foreigner comes chiefly from the peo- 
ple who hardly know him; from the town loafer or the 
small plantation manager who " hates the Dago worse than 
a nigger." Between such people and the few foreigners 
occasional " scraps " occur, and there have been instances 
of Italians or Bohunks who have been driven out by main 
force because their neighbors did not like them. 

To be sure the foreigner in the North is not unac- 
quainted with brickbats; but the real question is not 
whether the Southerner likes him, but whether he likes the 
South. He is under no such restraint as, for instance, in 
Buenos Ayres, where, if he is not satisfied, he must steam 
back six thousand miles to Europe ; trains leave every part 

55 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

of the South every day bound for the North. Hence, as 
soon as the problem of getting the immigrant to the South 
is solved, the next point is how to keep him there. Of 
the immigrants brought over by the WitteJcind- in 1906, 
at the end of a year the larger part had left South Caro- 
lina. The authorities of the State were guiltless of hold- 
ing out untrue inducements; but the immigrants did not 
expect to be charged their rail fares from Charleston to 
the place of labor ; they found the wages less than they had 
supposed; sometimes less than they had received at home; 
they were obliged to deal with the company's store, instead 
of being paid in cash. Especially they complained that 
farm hands were not so " intimately received by their em- 
ployers " as their cousins were in the Northwest. When the 
WitteMnd was ready to sail from Bremen two hundred 
people who expected to join her refused to go, because 
they had just heard of the race riot in Atlanta and thought 
the South could not be a pleasant place. Rumors of 
peonage, and a few actual cases, had also a deterring 
effect. 

Nevertheless, there are a score or more of little agri- 
cultural communities in which a considerable part of the 
people are foreigners. Most of these people are Italians, 
that being an immigrating race accustomed to field labor 
in a warm climate, and traditionally inured to the peasant 
system. As these people bring little capital, most of them 
are assembled on some plantation which undertakes on the 
usual terms to advance them necessities until their crop 
can be made. It costs in central Louisiana about $60 per 
head to get Italians, and that is deducted out of their 
first year's earnings. In some cases the Italians come 
out as railroad and levee hands and afterward bring over 
their families. At Alexandria, La., in the neighborhood of 

56 



IMMIGRATION 

Shreveport, at Valdese, N. C, and elsewhere, are inde- 
pendent Italian villages. 

The most successful plantation worked by Italian 
labor is undoubtedly Sunny Side, founded by the late 
Austin Corbin on very rich land in southeastern Arkansas. 
It dates back to 1898; the original plan was to subdivide 
the estate and sell it to the immigrants; and at one time 
there were perhaps fifteen hundred to two thousand Ital- 
ians there, many of whom were not farmers and soon 
grew tired of the place. At one time they were reduced 
to less than forty families, but people have drifted back 
and new ones have come in, until in 1908 there were over 
one hundred and twenty families. They are sober, in- 
dustrious, and profitable both to themselves and to the 
plantation owners, who have placed the same kind of 
labor on other plantations and would gladly extend the 
system if they could get the people. 

Some other race elements are to be found in the South ; 
a few Greeks have made their appearance; Bulgarians, 
Hungarians, and " Austrians " (probably Slavs) may be 
found in Louisiana; but the greater number of recent ac- 
cessions are laborers or small business men, who play a 
very small part in the economic and social development 
of the region. 

This whole question of the foreigner is in close re- 
lation to the negro problem. Even where the " Dagoes " 
are brought into close contact with the Negroes, they 
neither make nor meddle with them; but the main reason 
for interest in their coming is the scarcity and the ineffec- 
tiveness of negro labor. If the number of foreigners 
should largely increase, there is little doubt that they 
would join in the combination of the white race against 
the Negro. On the other hand they furnish a more regu- 

57 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

lar field labor than the planter is otherwise able to employ, 
and when put alongside the Negro sometimes they stimu- 
late him to unwonted effort, as witness the experience 
of an old cotton hand related to A. H. Stone : " I 'lowed 
to Marthy, when I heered dem Dagoes had done bought 
the jinin' tract, dat I was gwine ter show de white folks dat 
here was one nigger what wouldn' lay down in front er 
no man livin', when it come to makin' cotton. En I done 
it, too, plumb till pickin' time. It blowed me, too, sho's 
you bawn, blowed me mightily. But jis ez I thought I 
had um bested, what you reckon happened ? I'z a natchel- 
bawn cotton picker, myself, and so is Marthy, and right 
dar is whar I 'lowed I had um. But 'tother night when 
me and de old 'oman 'uz drivin' back fum church, long 
erbout 12 o'clock, en er full moon, what you reckon I seen, 
boss? Fo' Gawd in Heaven, dat Dago en his wife en fo' 
chillum wuz pickin' cotton by de moonlight. I do' 'no 
how it looks to you, but I calls dat er underhanded trick 
myself ! " 



CHAPTER Y 



SOUTHERN LEADERSHIP 



IMMIGRANTS either from the North or from abroad 
may be ignored as a formative part of the South; but 
the Poor Whites are only a part of the rank and file. 
There are many independent farmers, handicraftsmen, 
skilled laborers, and small laborers, all parts of a great 
democracy; and one of the causes of uplift is the coming 
of this democracy to a consciousness of its own power. 
Nevertheless, in the South as elsewhere in the world, the 
great aifairs are carried on, the great decisions are made, 
by a comparatively small number of persons; and in no 
part of the Union has a select aristocracy such prestige 
and influence. 

Before the war this leading element was very distinctly 
marked off, because it was nearly restricted to slavehold- 
ers and their connections by blood and marriage. Very 
few pe'ople, except in the mountain districts, ever held 
important state or national office who did not come from 
the slaveholding families, which never numbered more 
than three hundred thousand; and half of those families 
owned less than five Negroes and could hardly claim to 
belong to the ruling class. The slaveholding aristocracy 
included nearly all of the professional and commercial 
men, the ministers, the doctors, the college instructors, es- 
5 59 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

pecially the lawyers, from whom the ranks of public serv- 
ice were to a great degree recruited. 

These people were organized into a society of a kind 
unknown in the North since colonial times. In any one 
state the well-to-do people, perhaps two to five thousand 
in all, knew each other, recognized each other as belong- 
ing to a kind of gentry, intermarried, furnished nearly 
all the college and professional students, and were the 
dignitaries of their localities. In organization, if not in 
opportunities or in the amenities of life, they were very 
like the English county gentry of the period. 

Those conditions are now much changed. In the first 
place, the old ruling families have almost all lost their 
wealth and their interstate position. Deference is still 
paid to them; a John Eutledge is always a John Rut- 
ledge welcomed anywhere in South Carolina, and a Clai- 
bourne carries the dignity of the family that furnished 
the first Governor of Mississippi ; but it is a mournful fact 
that hardly a large plantation in the South is now owned 
by a descendant of the man who owned it in 1860. Some 
of the most ambitious of the scions of these ancient houses, 
whose communities no longer give them sufficient oppor- 
tunities, have found their way to New York and other 
Northern cities, and are there founding new families. 
Many more are upbuilders of the Southern cities; some of 
them are again becoming landed proprietors. Still the 
element dominant in society, in business, and in admin- 
istration, includes a large number of people who have 
come up from below or have come in from without since 
the Civil War. 

Distinctly above the traditional Poor White, though 
often confused with him by outsiders, is the Southern 
white farmer. In ante-bellum days there was in every 

60 



SOUTHERN LEADERSHIP 

Southern state, and particularly in the border states, a 
large body of independent men, working their own land 
without slaves, with the assistance of their sons — for white 
laborers for hire could not be had — and often prosperous. 
They were on good terms with the planters, had their share 
of the public honors, and probably furnished a considerable 
part of the Southern Whig vote. Their descendants still 
persist, often in debt, frequently unprogressive, but on the 
whole much resembling the farmer class in the neighboring 
Northern states. The destruction of slavery little dis- 
turbed the status of these men, and they are an important 
element in the progress of the South. 

The old leaders have lost preeminence, partly because 
the South now requires additional kinds of leaders. In 
the modern Southern cities may be found classes of whole- 
sale jobbers, attorneys of great corporations, national bank 
officers, manufacturers, agents of life insurance and in- 
vestment companies, engineers, and promoters, who were 
hardly known in the old South. In the social world these 
people still have to take their chance, for the foundation 
stones of society in every Southern state are the descend- 
ants of the leaders of the old regime, including many 
people whose former back-country farm with its half- 
dozen slaves has become magnified into a tradition of an 
old plantation. As a Southern writer says : " Legends had 
already begun to build themselves, as they will in a com- 
munity that entrusts its history to oral transmission. For 
instance, the fortunes of many of our families before the 
war became enormous, in our talk and in our beliefs." 

Notwithstanding this presumptive right of the old 
families to figure in modern society many are shut out by 
poverty and some by moral disintegration. Of course in 
the South as elsewhere the newcomers have more money 

61 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

and set a difficult standard of social expense; but, meas- 
ured by New York criterions, there are few wealthy peo- 
ple in the South. Leaving out the Northern men who 
play at being Southern gentlemen it is doubtful whether 
there are thirty millionaires in the whole Lower South; 
and it must never be forgotten that nothing in the world 
is so democratic within its narrow bounds as Southern 
society. The social leaders recognize on equal terms other 
Southern high-class people, and also outsiders whom they 
reckon as high class. There is a sharp difference between 
the poor farmer and the well-to-do proprietor or the city 
magnate; but there is not necessarily a social distinction 
between the family which has an income of three thou- 
sand a year and the family which disposes of thirty thou- 
sand a year. 

Furthermore, between all the members of the white 
race there is an easier relation than in the North; Pull- 
man Car conductors are on easy and respectful terms with 
lady passengers who frequently use their line, the poorest 
Wliite addresses the richest planter or most distinguished 
railroad man with an assured sense of belonging to the 
same class; society is distinctly more homogeneous than in 
•the North. It is also more gracious. What is more de- 
lightful than the high-bred Southern man and woman, 
courteous, friendly, and interested in high things, bent 
on bringing to bear all the resources of intellectual train- 
ing, religion, and social life for the welfare of the commu- 
nity? The high-class Southerner believes in education; 
he has a high sense of public duty ; he stands by his friends 
like a rock; unfortunate is the Northerner who does not 
count among his choicest possessions the friendship of 
Southern men and women! 

In business the South is developing a body of modern 
62 



SOUTHERISr LEADERSHIP 

go-ahead men who are alive to the needs of improvement 
in business methods, who adopt the latest machinery, seek 
to economize in processes, and have built up a stable and 
remarkably well-knit commercial system. The South be- 
fore the war had many safe banks, and no state in the 
Union enjoyed a better banking law than Louisiana. All 
that capital was swept away by the Civil War, and for 
twenty years was not replaced, outside the cities; now 
little banks are springing up at small railroad stations, and 
in remote little county seats; and there is a concert and 
understanding between the country and city bankers which 
is of great assistance to the material growth of the South. 
The Southern business system calls for prudent and cour- 
ageous men, and there is no lack of good material. 

In politics, however, a new type of leaders has in the 
last twenty years sprung up as a result of the genius of 
Benjamin R. Tillman in discovering that there are more 
voters of the lower class than of the upper, and that he 
who can get the lower class to vote together may always be 
reelected. As a matter of fact Tillman comes of a re- 
spectable middle-class family; but it is his part to show 
himself the coarsest and most vituperative of Poor Whites. 
Such men as ex-Governor Yardaman of Mississippi, and 
Senator Jeff Davis of Arkansas, are also evidences that the 
hold of the old type of political leader is weakened. Some 
people say that the present system of primary nominations 
is a sure way to bring mediocrity to the front. 

On the other hand, the leaders of society and business 
and politics and intellectual pursuits fit together much 
more closely than in the North. In part this is the re- 
sult of a social system in which people of various types 
imbibe each other's views; in greater part it is due to the 
influence of slavery, and the half century of contest over 

63 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

slavery, in which the great property owners were also the 
heads of the state, the pillars of the church, and the 
formers of opinion. 

The problem of the leader in the South is also the 
problem of the led; shall those who concentrate and shape 
public opinion, who carry on the corporations, write the 
newspapers, teach the university students, decide law cases, 
and preach the sermons, shall they also set forth a lofty 
spirit? Will the mass, the voters, the possessors of the 
physical force of the community, accept their decisions? 
In general, the tone of the leaders in the South is sane 
and wholesome; commercial influences are less strong on 
the press and on state and municipal governments than 
they are in the North. There is at least a greater senti- 
mental and abstract respect for learning, a larger part of 
the community is in touch with and molded by the 
churches. 

The lower Whites, though manifestly advancing, are 
still on the average far inferior to the similar class of 
white farmers of kindred English stock in the North; 
and also to many of the foreigners that have come in and 
settled the West. Education is going to help their chil- 
dren, but can do little for the grown people who are now 
the source of political power in the South; and there 
is a turbulence and uncontrolled passion, sometimes a fe- 
rocity, among the rural people which is to be matched in 
the North only in the slums. 

In some ways the Northern visitor is struck by a crude- 
ness of behavior among respectable Southern Whites 
such as he is accustomed in the North to experience 
in a much lower stratum of society. A large proportion 
of the Poor Wliites in the South and many of the better 
class go armed and justify it because they expect to have 

64 



SOUTHEEN LEADERSHIP 

need of a weapon. Tobacco juice flows freely in hotel cor- 
ridors, in railroad stations, and even in the vestibules of 
ladies' cars ; profanity is rife, and fierce talk and unbridled 
denunciations, principally of black people. There is 
doubtless just the same thing in Northern places, if you 
look for it, but in the South it follows you. With all the 
aristocratic feeling classes are more mixed together, and 
it is a harder thing than in the North to sift your acquaint- 
ances. Still there is an upward movement in every 
stratum of society ; as Murphy puts it : " The real strug- 
gle of the South from the date of Lee's surrender — through 
all the accidents of political and industrial revolution — ■ 
was simply a struggle toward the creation of democratic 
conditions. The real thing, in the unfolding of the later 
South, is the arrival of the common man." The North 
has always had confidence in the average man; in the 
South the upper and lower strata are in a more hopeful 
way of mutual understanding than perhaps in the North. 



CHAPTER VI 



SOUTHERN TEMPERAMENT 



THE South has not only its own division of special 
classes, its own methods of influence, it has also its 
own way of looking at the problems of the universe, 
and especially that department of the universe south of 
Mason and Dixon's line. To discover the temperament of 
the South is difficult, for upon the face of things the differ- 
ences of the two sections are slight. Aside from little 
peculiarities of dialect, probably no more startling than 
Bostonese English is to the Southerner when he first hears 
it, the people whom one meets in Southern trains and 
hotels appear very like their Northern kinsfolk. The 
Memphis drummer in the smoker tells the same stories that 
you heard yesterday from his Chicago brother; the mem- 
bers of the Charleston Club talk about their ancestors just 
like the habitues of the Rittenhouse Club in Philadel- 
phia; the President of the University of Virginia asks for 
money for the same reasons as the President of Western 
Reserve University; Northern and Southern men, meeting 
on mutual ground and avoiding the question of the Negro, 
which sometimes does not get into their conversation 
for half an hour together, find their habits of thought 
much the same: the usual legal reasoning, economic 
discussion, and religious controversy all appeal to the 
same kind of minds. Northerners read Lanier with the 

66 



SOUTHERN TEMPERAMENT 

same understanding with which Southerners read Long- 
fellow. 

Nevertheless there is a subtle difference of tempera- 
ment hard to catch and harder to characterize, which may 
perhaps be illustrated by the difference between the North- 
ern " Hurrah " and the " Rebel yell " ; between " Yankee 
Doodle ^^ and " Dixie," each stirring, each lively, yet each 
upon its separate key. Upon many questions, and par- 
ticularly upon all issues involving the relations of the 
white and negro races, the Southerner takes things dif- 
ferently from the Northerner. He looks upon himself 
from an emotional standpoint. Thomas Dixon, Jr., char- 
acterizes his own section as " The South, old-fashioned, 
medieval, provincial, worshipping the dead, and raising 
men rather than making money, family-loving, home- 
building, tradition-ridden. The South, cruel and cunning 
when fighting a treacherous foe, with brief, volcanic bursts 
of wrath and vengeance. The South, eloquent, bombastic, 
romantic, chivalrous, lustful, proud, kind and hospitable. 
The South, with her beautiful women and brave men." 

This self-consciousness is doubtless in part a result of 
external conditions, such as the isolation of many parts 
of the South; but still more is due to an automatic sensi- 
tiveness to all phases of the race question. People in the 
South often speak of their " two peoples " and " two civil- 
izations"; and at every turn, in every relation, a part 
of every discussion, is the fact that the population of the 
South is rigidly divided into two races marked off from 
each other by an impassable line of color. The North has 
race questions, but no race question: the foreign elements 
taken together are numerous enough, and their future is 
uncertain enough to cause anxiety; but they are as likely 
to act against each other as against the group of people 

67 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

of English stock ; as likely to harmonize with native Anglo- 
Saxon people as to oppose them — they are not a combined 
race standing in a cohort, watchful, suspicious, and resent- 
ful. The North has twenty race problems; the South has 
but one, which for^hat very reason is twenty times as seri- 
ous. In every field of Southern life, social, political, eco- 
nomic, intellectual, the presence of two races divides and 
weakens. The blacks and the Whites in the South are the 
two members of a pair of shears, so clumsily put together 
that they gnash against each other continually. Though 
one side be silver, and the other only bronze, neither can 
perform its function without the other, but there is a ter- 
rible strain upon the rivet which holds them together. 

This state of tension is not due wholly to the Negroes, 
nor removable by improving them, as though the straight- 
ening only the bronze half of the shears you could make 
them cut truly. If no Negroes had ever come over from 
Africa, or if they were all to be expatriated to-morrow, 
there would still remain a Southern question of great 
import. One of the mistakes of the Abolition controversy 
was to suppose that the South was different from the North 
simply because it had slaves; and that the two sections 
would be wholly alike if only the white people felt dif- 
ferently toward the Negro. The Negro does not make all 
the trouble, cause all the concern, or attract all the at- 
tention of thoughtful men in the South. In every part 
of that section, from the most remote cove in the Tennes- 
see mountains to the stateliest quarter of New Orleans, 
there is a Caucasian question, or rather a series of Cau- 
casian questions, arising out of the peculiar make-up of 
the white community, though alongside it is always the 
shadow of the African. 

Nobody can work out any of the Caucasian problems as 
68 



SOUTHERN TEMPERAMENT 

though they stood by themselves ; what now draws together 
most closely the elements of the white race is a sense of 
a race issue. The white man cannot build new school- 
houses or improve his cotton seed or open a coal mine 
without remembering that there is a flegro race and a 
negro problem. This consciousness of a double existence 
strikes every visitor and confronts every investigator. 
As Du Bois says, the stranger " realizes at last that silently, 
resistlessly, the world about flows by him in two great 
streams: they ripple on in the same sunshine, they ap- 
proach and mingle their waters in seeming carelessness, — 
then they divide and flow wide apart." Henry W. Grady 
asserted that "The race problem casts the only shadow 
that rests on the South." Murphy says, "The problems 
of racial cleavage, like problems of labor and capital, or 
the problems of science and religion, yield to no precise 
formulae; they are problems of life, persistent and irre- 
ducible." 

Various as are the opinions in the South with regard 
to the race problem and the modes of its solution, society 
is infused with a feeling of uneasiness and responsibility. 
Sometimes the visitor seems to catch a feeling of pervad- 
ing gloom ; sometimes he hears the furious and cruel words 
of those who would end the problem by putting the Negro 
out of the question; sometimes he listens to the hopeful 
voice of those who expect a peaceful and a just solu- 
tion; but all thinking men in the South agree that their 
section has a special, a peculiar, a difficult and almost 
insoluble problem in which the North has little or no 
share. 

Here comes in the first of many difficulties in dealing 
with the Southern question, a diversity of voices such that 
it is hard to know which speaks for the South, or where 

69 



THE SOUTHEKN SOUTH 

the average sentiment is to be found. Public opinion on 
some moral and social questions is less easily concentrated 
than in the North; though the prohibitionists have re- 
cently made a very successful campaign through a gen- 
eral league, all efforts to focus public opinion on the 
negro question through general societies and public meet- 
ings have so far failed. 

Agitation or even discussion of the race problem 
is not much aided by the press, though in some ways 
journalism is on a higher plane than in the North. 
Most cities, even small ones, have a newspaper which 
is edited with real literary skill, and which does not 
seem to be the servant of any commercial interest. There 
is a type of Southern paper of which the Charleston News 
and Courier is the best example, which has for its stock- 
in-trade, ultra and Bourbon sentiments. No paper in 
the South is more interesting than the News and Courier, 
but it represents an age that is past. The conservative, 
readable, and on the whole, high-toned Southern news- 
papers, do not in general seem to lead public sentiment, 
and the yellow journal has begun to compete with them. 
Still the paper which by its lurid statement of facts, large 
admixture of lies, and use of ferocious headlines, was 
one of the chief agents in bringing about the Atlanta 
riots of 1907 afterwards went into the hands of a receiver; 
and journals of that type have less influence than in the 
North. 

A temperamental Southern characteristic is an impa- 
tience of dissent, a characteristic which has recently been 
summed up as follows by a foreigner who has lived twelve 
years in the South and is identified with it. " There are 
three phases of public sentiment that I must regard as 
weaknesses, . . . The public attitude of Southern temper 

70 



SOUTHERN TEMPEEAMENT 

is over-sensitive and too easily resents criticism . . . Then, 
I think the Southern people are too easily swayed by an 
apparent public sentiment, the broader and higher con- 
science of the people gives way too readily to a tin-pan 
clamor, the depth and real force of which they are not 
disposed to question. . . . Again, . . . the South as a sec- 
tion, does not seem fully to appreciate the importance of 
the inevitables in civilization — the fixed and unalterable 
laws of progress." Illustrations of this sensitiveness to 
criticism are abundant. For instance, the affectionate girl 
in the Southern school when a Yankee teacher gives her a 
low mark, bursts into tears, and wants to know why the 
teacher does not love her. 

From slavery days down, there has been a disposition 
to look upon Northern writers and visitors with suspicion. 
Still inquirers are in all parts of the South received with 
courtesy by those whose character and interest in the 
things that make for the uplift of both the white and the 
black race furnish the most convincing argument that 
there is an enlightened public sentiment which will work 
out the Southern problem. In any case there is no public 
objection to criticism of Southerners by other Southerners ; 
nothing, for instance, could be more explicit and mutually 
unfavorable than the opinions exchanged between Hoke 
Smith and Clark Howells in 1907, when rival candidates 
for the governorship of Georgia. In politics one may say 
what he likes, subject to an occasional rebuke from the 
revolver's mouth. 

It is not the same in the discussion of the race question. 
In half a dozen instances in the last few years, attempts 
have been made to drive out professors from Southern col- 
leges and universities, on the ground that they were not 
sufficiently Southern. In one such case, that of Professor 

71 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

Bassett, at Trinity College, North Carolina, who said in 
print that Booker AYashington was the greatest man ex- 
cept Lee, born in the South in a hundred years, it stood 
by him manfully, and his retention was felt to be a tri- 
umph for free speech. Other boards of trustees have 
rallied in like manner, and there is a fine spirit of fear- 
less truth among professors of colleges, ministers, lawyers, 
and public men. It is no small triumph for the cause 
of fair play that John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, 
in 1907 came out in opposition to Governor Vardaman's 
violent abuse of the Negro, on that issue triumphed over 
him in the canvass for the United States Senate; and 
then in a public address committed himself to a friendly 
and hopeful policy toward the Negro. 

In part, this frame of mind is due to a feeling neatly 
stated by a Southern banker : "The Southern people are 
not a bad kind, and a kind word goes a long way with 
them; they have odd peculiarities; they cannot argue, and 
as soon as you differ with them, you arouse temper, not on 
the Negro question especially, but on any." This diagnosis 
is confirmed by " Nicholas Worth " : " Few men cared 
what opinion you held about any subject. ... I could talk 
in private as I pleased with Colonel Stover himself about 
Jefferson Davis or about educating the negro. He was 
tolerant of all private opinions, privately expressed among 
men only. But the moment that an objectionable opinion 
was publicly expressed, or expressed to women or to ne- 
groes, that was another matter. Then it touched our 
sacred dead, our hearthstones, etc." This state of feel- 
ing has much affected politics in the South and is in 
part responsible for the phenomenon called the Solid 
South, under which, whatever be its causes, the South 
is deprived of influence either in nominating or sup- 

72 



SOUTHERN TEMPERAMENT 

plying candidates for national office, because its vote 
may be relied upon in any case for one party and one 
only. 

The dislike of the critic is specially strong when crit- 
icism comes from foreigners, and aggravated when it 
comes from Northerners. A recent Southern speaker says : 
" Now, as since the day the first flagship was legalized in 
its trade in Massachusetts, . . . the trouble in the race 
question is due to the persistent assertion on the part of 
northern friends and philanthropists that they under- 
stand the problem and can devise the means for its so- 
lution." That Northerners do not all lay claim to such 
understanding, or hold themselves responsible for race 
troubles, is admitted by a Southerner of much greater 
weight, Edgar Gardner Murphy, who has recently said: 
"Beneath the North's serious and rightful sense of ob- 
ligation the South saw only an intolerant ^ interference.' 
Beneath the South's natural suspicion and solicitude the 
North saw only an indiscriminating enmity to herself and 
to the negro." 

To these characteristics another is added by " Nicholas 
Worth," in his discussion of the " oratorical habit of 
mind " of a generation ago — " Rousing speech was more 
to be desired than accuracy of statement. An exaggerated 
manner and a tendency to sweeping generalizations were 
the results. You can now trace this quality in the mind 
and in the speech of the great majority of Southern men, 
especially men in public life. We call it the undue devel- 
opment of their emotional nature. It is also the result 
of a lack of any exact training, — of a system that was 
mediaeval." Another form of this habit of mind is the love 
of round numbers, a fondness for stating a thing in the 
largest terms; thus the clever but no-wise distinguished 

73 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

professor of Latin is " Probably the greatest classical 
scholar in the United States/' the siege of Vicksburg was 
" the most terrific contest in the annals of warfare " ; the 
material progress of the South is " the most marvelous 
thing in human history." 

This difference of temperament between North and 
South is not confined to members of the white race. The 
mental processes of the Southern Negro differ not only 
from those of the Southern White, but to a considerable 
degree from those of the Northern Negro ; and the African 
temperament has, in the course of centuries, in some ways 
reacted upon the minds of the associated white race. The 
real standards and aspirations of the Negroes are crudely 
defined and little known outside themselves, and if they 
were better understood they would still have scant influ- 
ence upon the white point of view. The " Southern tem- 
perament," therefore means the temperament of the 
Southern Whites, of the people who control society, forum, 
and legislature. It is always more important to know 
what people think than what they do, and every phase of 
the race question in the South is affected by the habits of 
thought of thinking white people. 

Both sections need to understand each other; and that 
good result is impeded by the belief of a large number of 
people in the South that the North as a section feels a 
personal hostility to the South; that in Reconstruction 
it sought to humiliate the Southern Whites, and to despoil 
them of their property; that it planted schools in the 
South with the express purpose of bringing about a social 
equality hateful to the Whites ; that it arouses in the Negro 
a frame of mind which leads to the most hideous of crimes ; 
and that Northern observers and critics of the South are 
little better than spies. 

74 



\ 



SOUTHERN TEMPERAMENT 

The North is doubtless blamable for some past ill 
feeling and some ill judgment, but it cannot be charged 
now with prejudice against the South. It is not too much 
to say that the North as a section is weary of the negro 
question; that it is disappointed in the progress of the 
race both in the South and in the North; that it is over- 
whelmed with a variety of other questions, and less in- 
clined than at any time during forty years to any active 
interference in Southern relations. An annual floodtide 
carries many Northern people into Florida and other 
pleasure resorts, where they see the surface of the negro 
question and accept without verification the conventional 
statements that they hear; the same tide on its ebb brings 
them North with a tone of discouragement and irritation 
toward the Negro, which much affects Northern public sen- 
timent. 

This apathy or disappointment is unfortunate, for 
from many points of view, the North has both an interest 
and a responsibility for what goes on in the South. First 
of all, from its considerable part in bringing about present 
conditions. Besides an original share in drawing slavery 
upon the colonies, the North by the emancipation of the 
slaves disturbed the preexisting balance of race relations, 
such as it was. Then in Reconstruction the North at- 
tempted to bring about a new political system with the 
honest expectation that it would solve the race question. 
Surely it has a right to examine the results of its action, 
with a view either to justify its attitude, or to accept cen- 
sure for it. 

If either through want of patience or skill or by sheer 

force of adverse circumstance a dangerous condition has 

come about in the South for which the dominant white 

Southerners are not responsible, they are entitled to an 

6 75 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

understanding of their case and to sympathy, encourage- 
ment and aid in overcoming their troubles. No thinking 
person in the North desires anything but the peaceful re- 
moval of the evils which undeniably weigh upon the South. 
To that end the North might offer something out of its 
own experience, for it has expert knowledge of race 
troubles and of ways to solve them. The Indian question 
ever since the Civil War has been chiefly in the hands of 
Northern men ; and if it has been a botchy piece of work, 
at least a way out has been found in the present land-in- 
severalty plan; and from the North in considerable part 
has proceeded the government of the Filipinos. The 
North carries almost alone a mass of foreigners who con- 
tribute difficulties which in diversity much exceed the 
negro problem, and which so far have been so handled that 
in few places is there a crisis, acute or threatening. The 
North has further its own experiences with Negroes, be- 
ginning in Colonial times; it now harbors a million of 
them; and it has in most places found a peaceful living 
basis for the two races, side by side. 

Perhaps Southern people do not make sufficient allow- 
ance for the scientific love of inquiry of the North. It 
is a region where Vassar students of sociology visit the 
probation courts; where Yale men descend upon New 
York and investigate Tammany Hall; where race rela- 
tions are thought a fit subject for intercollegiate debate 
and scientific monographs, on the same footing with the 
distribution of immigrants, or the career of discharged 
convicts. In Massachusetts, people are ready to attack 
any insoluble problem, from the proper authority of the 
Russian Douma to the reason why cooks give notice with- 
out previous notice. As a study of human nature, as an 
exercise in practical sociology, the Southern race prob- 

76 



SOUTHERN TEMPERAMENT 

lem has for the North much the same fascination as the 
preceding slavery question. 

Doubtless the zeal for investigation, and the disposition 
to give unasked advice, would both be lessened if the 
Southern problem were already solved or on the road to 
solution by the people nearest to it. The Southern Whites 
have had control of every Southern state government 
since 1876 and some of them longer; they are dominant 
in legislature, court and plantation; yet they have not 
yet succeeded in putting an end to their own perplexities. 
Some of them still defiantly assert themselves against man- 
kind; thus Professor* Smith, of New Orleans, says apropos 
of the controversy over race relations: "The attitude of 
the South presents an element of the pathetic. The great 
world is apparently hopelessly against her. Three-fourths 
of the virtue, culture, and intelligence of the United 
States seems to view her with pitying scorn; the old 
mother, England, has no word of sympathy, but applauds 
the conduct that her daughter reprehends; the continent 
of Europe looks on with amused perplexity, as unable even 
to comprehend her position, so childish and absurd.'^ Pro- 
fessor Smith's answer to his own question is : " The South 
cares nothing, in themselves, for the personal friend- 
ships or appreciations of high-placed dignitaries and men 
of light and leading." He does not speak for his section; 
for most intelligent Southern people, however extreme 
their views, desire to be understood; they want their po- 
sition to seem humane and logical to their neigh- 
bors; they are sure that they are the only people who 
can be on the right road ; but they do not feel that they are 
approaching a permanent adjustment of race relations. 

How could such an adjustment be expected now ? The 
negro question has existed ever since the first landing 

77 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

of negro slaves in 1619, became serious in some colonies 
before 1700, gave rise to many difficulties and complica- 
tions during the Revolution, was reflected in the Constitu- 
tional Convention of 1787, later proved to be the rock of 
offense upon which the Union split, and has during the 
forty years since the Civil War been the most absorbing 
subject of discussion in the South. It hardly seems likely 
that it will be put to rest in our day and generation. 

Yet some settlement is necessary for the peace and the 
prosperity of both races ; and one of the means to that end 
is a frank, free and open discussion in all parts of the 
Union. Nothing was so prejudicial to slavery as the at- 
tempt to silence the Northern abolitionists; for a social 
system that was too fragile to be discussed was doomed to 
be broken. One of the most encouraging things at pres- 
ent is the willingness of the South to discuss its problems 
on its own ground, and to admit that there can be a vari- 
ety of opinions ; and to meet rather than to defy the criti- 
cisms of observers. 

If the thinking people of the South were less willing 
to share the discussion with the North, it would still be a 
Northern concern ; for the Southern race problem, like the 
labor unions of the manufacturing North, the distribu- 
tion of lands in the far West, and the treatment of Mon- 
golians on the Pacific Coast, is nobody's exclusive property. 
There must be freedom for the men of every section to dis- 
cuss every such question; it is the opportunity for mutual 
helpfulness. For instance, how much might be contribu- 
ted to an understanding of the decay of the New England 
hill towns by a Southern visitor who should visit them 
and then report upon them from his point of view. Vio- 
lent, ignorant, and prejudiced discussion of any section 
of the Union by any other section is, of course, destructive 

78 



SOUTHERN TEMPERAMENT 

of national harmony; but the days have gone by when it 
could be thought unfriendly, hostile, or condemnatory for 
Northern men to strive to make themselves familiar with 
the race questions of the South. " We are everyone mem- 
bers of another," and the whole body politic suffers from 
the disease of any member. The immigrant in the North 
is the concern of the Southerner for he is to become part 
of America. The status of the plantation hand in Ala- 
bama is likewise a Northern problem; as Murphy has 
recently said: "The Nation, including the South as well 
as the North, and the West as well as the South and the 
North, has to do with every issue in the South that 
touches any national right of the humblest of its citizens. 
Too long it has been assumed, both at the North and at 
the South, that the North is the Nation. The North 
is not the Nation. The Nation is the life, the thought, 
the conscience, the authority, of all the land." 



CHAPTER VII 

ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTORY 

THE history of the United States is a rope of many 
strands, each of which was twisted into form before 
they were united into one cable. Each state marks 
the sites of its first landings, puts monuments on its battle- 
fields, commemorates its liberty days, and teaches its chil- 
dren to remember the great years of the past. The South 
has a full share of these memories, which are both local 
events and foundation stones of the nation's history. 
Jamestown, St. Mary's, Charleston, Fort Moultrie, York- 
town, Mobile, belong to us all, as much as Providence, 
Bunker Hill, Saratoga, and San Francisco. 

The Southern mind likes to think of its episodes as 
contributions to the national history, and at the same 
time to claim as specifically Southern all that has taken 
place in the South since the foundation of the Federal 
Union. School histories are written and prescribed by 
legislatures to teach children a Southern point of view; 
the South of Washington and Jefferson, of Jackson and 
Calhoun, is looked upon as something apart from the na- 
tion. To some extent there is reason for this frame of 
mind; slavery, or rather the obstinate maintenance of 
slavery after it had disappeared in other civilized com- 
munities, put the South in a position of defiance of the 
world for near three quarters of a century; hence the 

80 



ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTORY 

history of the South from 1789 to 1861 can be separated 
from that of the Union as a whole in a manner impossible 
for New England and the West. 

This separate history needs, like other eras of human 
history, to be envisaged in the light of things that actually 
were. Such calm and unbiased approach to the study 
of past times is difficult in the South because of the ex- 
aggeration of one of the fine traits of Southern character, 
of its respect for the past, its veneration for ancestors. 
In a world of progress a main influence is the conviction 
that things need to be improved, that the children are 
wiser than their fathers; but this spirit is out of accord 
with the Southern feeling of loyalty to section, to state, to 
kindred, and to ancestors. Charles Francis Adams spends 
years in showing up the inconsistencies of the character of 
his Puritan forbears; but to the Southern mind there 
would be something shocking in a South Carolina or 
Virginia writer who should set forth unfavorable views 
of the courage of General Moultrie or the legal skill of 
Patrick Henry. 

For this reason, or for more occult reasons, there is a 
disposition in the South to hold to local traditional views 
of the history of the United States as a whole and of the 
South in particular. For instance, most North Carolinians 
seem addicted to the belief that Mecklenburg County drew 
up certain drastic resolutions of Independence, May 20, 
1775; and the man who is not convinced of it had better 
live somewhere else than in North Carolina. In like 
manner many Southerners suppose it to be an established 
fact that the aristocracy in the South were descended from 
English Cavaliers, and the leaders in New England from 
the Puritans. Yet there is little evidence of permanent 
Cavalier influence in any Southern colony. The most 

81 



THE SOUTHERISr SOUTH 

recent historian of early Virginia, Bruce, says: '^The 
principal figures in the history of Virginia in the seven- 
teenth century were men of the stamp of Samuel Mathews, 
George Menefie, Robert Beverley, Adam Thoroughgood, 
Ralph Wormeley, William Fitzhugh, Edmund Scarbor- 
ough, and William Byrd/' Are these names more heraldic 
than those of John Winthrop and John Endicott and 
Thomas Dudley? Aside from the titled governors who 
did not remain in the colonies. Lord Fairfax possessed the 
only Virginia title, and he may be balanced by Sir William 
Phipps, the Yankee knight. George Washington's ances- 
tors are known to have been respectable English squires, 
but where are the Cavalier forefathers of Patrick Henry 
and Thomas Jefferson, John C. Calhoun and Jefferson 
Davis? The bone and sinew of the Colonial South, as of 
the North, was made up of the English middle class, yeo- 
men and shopkeepers; and in both sections the descendants 
of those men chiefly came to eminence. 

Another of the unfortified beliefs which have wide 
currency in the South is that under slavery the South 
was a prosperous, happy, and glorious community. Robert 
Toombs, of Georgia, in a lecture delivered in Boston in 
1856, said of the slave states: "In surveying the whole 
civilized world, the eye rests not on a single spot where 
all classes of society are so well content with their social 
system, or have greater reason to be so, than in the slave- 
holding States of this Union. . . . They may safely chal- 
lenge the admiration of the civilized world." Later books 
of reminiscence carry you back to the delightful days when 
" the old black mahogany table, like a mirror, was cov- 
ered with Madeira decanters standing in silver casters, 
and at each plate was a glass finger bowl with four pipe- 
stem glasses on their sides just touching the water " ; when 

82 



ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTORY 

" woman's conquests were made by the charms and graces 
given them by nature rather than by art of women mo- 
distes and men milliners . . . and the men prided them- 
selves, above all things, on being gentlemen. This gave 
tone to society." 

This system was assumed to be especially happy for 
the slave ; witness a recent Southern writer : " Hence, to 
the negro, the institution of slavery, so far from being 
prejudicial, was actually beneficial in its effects, in that, 
as a strictly paternal form of government, it furnished that 
combination of wise control and kind compulsion which 
is absolutely essential to his development and well-being." 
Minor, in his recent " The Real Lincoln," urges that " the 
children of slaveholders may be saved from being be- 
trayed into the error of regarding with reprobation the 
conduct of their parents in holding slaves " ; and justifies 
slavery on the ground that the slaves had " a more liberal 
supply of the necessaries of life than was ever granted 
to any other laboring class in any other place, or other 
age." Reed, in his " Brothers' War," holds that " Any and 
every evil of southern slavery to the negro was accidental. 
. . . Slavery, so far from being wrong morally, was right- 
eousness, justice, and mercy to the slave." No wonder that 
" Nicholas Worth " exclaims : " What I discovered was that 
the people did not know their own history; that they had 
accepted certain oft-repeated expressions about it as facts; 
and that the practical denial of free discussion of certain 
subjects had deadened research and even curiosity to know 
the truth." 

This theory that slavery was harmful, if harmful at 
all, only to the white race, has gone to the extent of in- 
sisting that slavery was educational; thus Thomas Nelson 
Page says that at the end of the War, among the able- 

83 



THE SOUTHERiSr SOUTH 

bodied Negroes there was "scarcely an adult who was not 
a trained laborer or a skilled artisan. In the cotton sec- 
tion they knew how to raise and prepare cotton; in the 
sugar belt they knew how to grow and grind sugar; in 
the tobacco, corn, wheat, and hay belts they knew how 
to raise and prepare for market those crops. They were 
the shepherds, cattle-men, horse-trainers and raisers. The 
entire industrial work of the South was performed by 
them. . . . Nearly all the houses in the South were built 
by them. They manufactured most of the articles that 
were manufactured in the South." And Mrs. Avary, in her 
" Dixie After the War," thinks that " the typical Southern 
plantation was, in effect, a great social settlement for the 
uplift of Africans." These arguments are perhaps not 
intended to suggest that the present free laboring popula- 
tion would be better off if reduced to slavery ; but they fix 
upon the present generation the unhappy task of justifying 
all the mistakes of previous generations. 

The natural and wholly justifiable pride in the military 
spirit of the South during the Civil War extends over to 
the constitutional, or rather psychical, question of Seces- 
sion. No issue in the world is deader than the question 
whether states have a right to secede, for the simple rea- 
son that the experience of forty years ago shows that in 
case any state or group of states hereafter may wish to 
secede, the other states will infallibly combine to resist 
by military force : no state or section can ever again assert 
that it has reason to suppose that secession is a peaceful 
and constitutional remedy, which should be accepted 
quietly by the sister states. To justify the doctrine of 
secession now would mean to pull out the bracing of the 
Union, no part of which is more determined to be a por- 
tion of one great and powerful American nation than the 

84 



ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTOEY 

Southern States. It can hardly be expected that the 
JSTorth, after sacrificing five hundred thousand lives and 
four billions of treasure, will, half a century later, come 
round to the point of view of the defeated section. 

It is equally idle at this period of the world's history 
to deny to the Southern leaders in the Civil War sincerity 
and courage, or to withhold from the nation the credit 
of such lofty characters as Lee and Stonewall Jackson; 
but if they are to become world heroes alongside of Crom- 
well and Iredell, consistency demands that the corre- 
sponding Northern leaders shall likewise be accepted as 
sincere and courageous, and in addition as standing for 
those permanent national principles to which the children 
of their adversaries have now given allegiance. It is dis- 
couraging to discover such a book as Charles L. C. Minor's 
" The Eeal Lincoln ; from the Testimony of his Contem- 
poraries," which has gone to a second edition and the pur- 
pose of which is, by quoting the harsh and cruel things 
said of Lincoln in the North during his lifetime, to show 
that he was weak, bad, and demoralized. Far more mod- 
ern the testimony of Grady in his New York speech of 
1886, when he referred to him " who stands as the first 
typical American, the first who comprehended within him- 
self all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and 
grace of this republic — Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum 
of Puritan and Cavalier; for in his ardent nature were 
fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul 
the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, 
greater than Cavalier, in that he was American." 

If the South looks on the Civil War through some fa- 
vorable haze, it is chiefly in the direction of magnifying 
genuinely great men, and few of the Confederate soldiers 
retain any bitterness toward the other side. This is not 

85 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

the case with Reconstruction — toward which, for a variety 
of reasons, the South feels the bitterest resentment. Only 
a few months ago a flowery speaker in Baltimore, ad- 
dressing an audience composed chiefly of Northern peo- 
ple, declared that " all the ignominy, shame, bloodshed, 
moral debasement that followed the crowning infamy of 
the Fifteenth Amendment must be laid at the door of 
the North alone. . . . The whole movement was thor- 
oughly revolutionary — anarchy, chaos, ruin was the inevi- 
table result." Thomas Dixon, Jr., rings all the changes 
and more on this theme. He makes Thaddeus Stevens, in 
the intervals that he can spare from his negro paramour, 
set out to confiscate the property of all the Southern 
Whites ; and he supposes that the North sends down as its 
agents in the South " Army cooks, teamsters, fakirs, and 
broken-down preachers who had turned insurance agents." 
He charges that by the North the attempt was " deliber- 
ately made to blot out Anglo-Saxon society and substitute 
African barbarism." 

The years from 1865 to 1871 were indeed sorrowful 
for the Southern States, and have planted seeds of hos- 
tility between North and South and also between the 
races in the South; but declamation and exaggeration add 
nothing to the real hardships of the process. Many South- 
erners still believe that their section was impoverished 
only by emancipation, which they say swept away two 
thousand million dollars' worth of property ; they overlook 
that the South was politically and economically ruined by 
the losses of four years of a war which, besides the actual 
destruction in the track of armies, by its terrible drain 
took all the accumulated capital of the section. After the 
war the South still retained the land and the Negroes to 
work it. The community as a whole lost nothing except 

86 



ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTORY 

from the dislocation of industry. Inasmuch as the South 
has recovered its productive capacity, and there is not a 
man of any standing in the South who, from the point 
of view of the white man's interest, would go back to slav- 
ery if he could, it is time that the charges of spoliation 
by emancipation were withdrawn. 

Both the duration and the intensity of the Reconstruc- 
tion process have been overestimated. It was a period 
of general disorganization; the time of the Credit Mo- 
bilier scandals; the exact decade when the people of New 
York City were paying eighty million dollars for the 
privilege of being plundered by Boss Tweed. The 
Southern state governments had previously been eco- 
nomically administered, and the people keenly felt the 
degradation of corruption from which Northern States 
were also suffering; but the actual period of Reconstruc- 
tion was much shorter than has usually been supposed. 
After the first attempts to reorganize the governments in 
1865, they went back into the hands of the military, and 
the consensus of testimony is that the military govern- 
ment if harsh was honest. There they remained in all 
cases until 1868 and in Georgia until 1871. Within little 
more than a year after 1868 the Conservatives of Virginia 
regained control; in Alabama Reconstruction lasted only 
twenty-eight months; in the tidal wave of 1874 the car- 
petbag and scalawag power was broken in all the Southern 
States except South Carolina and Louisiana. 

One year or five years of bad government was too much, 
but Southern lawlessness was not the monopoly of the 
Reconstruction governments. One of the greatest evils 
of the period was the Ku Klux Klan which Reed says " be- 
comes dearer in memory every year.'' There was reason 
for recovering white supremacy in the South, even though 

87 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

the conditions of the Reconstnietion government have been 
somewhat exaggerated; but the Ku Klux aroused a spirit 
of disorder, a defiance of the vested rights of white men 
as well as of Negroes, which has been a malign influence 
for forty years. The night-riders in Kentucky are almost 
a conscious imitation of the Ku Klux, and only a few 
months ago it was suggested that it be reorganized in Geor- 
gia to deal with negro crime. It is one thing to read 
of the gallant struggle of the Ku Klux to protect woman- 
hood and to asert the nobility of the white race ; it is quite 
another to be told, incidentally, that in a certain county 
of Mississippi the Ku Klux " put a hundred and nineteen 
niggers into the river." That is what some people call a 
massacre. 

The attitude of some Southerners toward the Civil 
War and Reconstruction suggests the story of the Georgia 
captain who, after three years of honest fighting, reap- 
peared on his farm and was welcomed home by his faith- 
ful Penelope. "The war is over," said he; "I have come 
home to stay forever." " Is that true, Jim ? Have you 
licked the Yankees at last ? " " Yes, I have licked them at 
last, but if they don't stay licked, I don't know but I may 
have to go up North and lick 'em again." 

Is the North to be " licked again " indefinitely ? The 
suffering, the sacrifice, and the heroism of the Civil War 
were as great on its side of Mason and Dixon's line as on 
the other side ; and the historical perspective of that period 
of conflict covers some incidents which the North forgets 
with difficulty. For instance, the prison of Andersonville 
was hateful to the whole North. After forty years it is 
easier than at the time to understand the difficulties of 
an impoverished government guarding thousands of pris- 
oners with a scanty force in a region lacking in food. 

88 



ATTITUDE TOWARD HISTORY 

^Nevertheless, it is a deep conviction of the survivors among 
the prisoners and in the minds of many thousand other 
persons that these inherent difficulties were aggravated 
by the incompetency and heartlessness of Captain Wirz, 
who by accepting command assumed the responsibility for 
the condition of things. By the best showing of his friends 
he was an incompetent man, who had the power of life 
and death over thousands of his fellow-men, and let many 
of them die for want of humanity and common sense. The 
only reason for remembering Wirz is that he was obnox- 
ious to the Northern soldiers in a time of great excitement. 
Yet the South of Lee and Jackson and Sidney Johnston 
has erected a monument to that man who performed no 
service to the Confederacy except to be executed, who led 
in no heroic action, represents no chivalry, and who did 
not so much as capture a color or an army wagon. It is 
an example of what in other parts of the world is thought 
an emotional disinclination to look facts in the face. 

As to the period since Reconstruction — that is, the last 
thirty years — the acute sensibility of the South no longer 
takes the form of accusing the North of an attempt to 
submerge the white race, but rather is turned toward 
enlarged news of Southern wealth and prestige, which will 
be examined later in this book. It has been the service 
of Southern writers, teachers, and public men to look facts 
more squarely in the face. Still, one finds now and then 
an old man of the old Benton spirit. About two years 
ago a Mississippi newspaper greeted a visitor who had 
previously expressed some opinions on the South, as " an 
object of distaste to all decent people of Mississippi. . . . 
This blue-abdomened miscreant . . . would have the world 
believe that the South has burnings, lynchings, and such 
horrors, with special trains, and the children of the pub- 

89 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

lie schools to witness. Are the people of Jackson going 
to hear this traducer of them ; this man who prints broTid- 
cast over the country baseless slanders against the people 
who misguidedly invited him down here ? Are they going 
to hear a man filled with venom who will take their good 
name." And a high-toned Southern gentleman, up to that 
time a personal friend of the Northerner, thought it neces- 
sary to print a card in a newspaper, setting forth the fact 
that he at least had no responsibility for the presence of 
the Yankee. 



CHAPTER VIII 



NEGRO CHARACTER 



THE social organization of the Anglo-Saxons in the 
South, their relations with each other, their strife 
for leadership, takes little account of the other race, 
though it is diffused throughout the country; it is every- 
where with the Whites, but not of them. Although to the 
Southern mind the community is made up entirely of white 
people, numerically almost one third of the inhabitants 
of the former slaveholding states are Negroes, and in the 
Lower South there are five million blacks against seven 
million Whites. The moral and material welfare of the 
South is intimately affected by their presence, and still 
more by their character. They are as much children of 
the soil as the Whites; they are everywhere distributed, 
except in the mountains; their labor is necessary for the 
prosperity of the section; they have a social organization 
of their own and many of the appliances of civilization; 
they own some land, travel, are everywhere in evidence, 
yet they are distrusted by nearly all the Whites, despised 
by more than half of them, and hated by a considerable 
and apparently increasing fraction. 

Even the names habitually used by the Whites for their 
neighbors show contempt. " Nigger," though often used 
among the blacks, is felt by them to be deprecia- 
tory; "Darky" is jocular; "Negro" is condescending; 
7 91 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

" Blacks " as a generic term is incorrect in view of the 
light color of a large fraction of the race. Afro-American, 
the invention of the Negi'oes, is pedantic. The Negroes 
themselves much prefer " Colored person," which is also 
a term used in directories. 

Every Southern man and woman consciously or uncon- 
sciously makes generalizations as to the whole race from 
those comparatively few individuals with whom he is ac- 
quainted. Hence conventional and offhand statements, 
obviously based upon little direct knowledge of the Negro, 
abound in private conversation, in public addresses and in 
print. For example, a few months ago the mayor of Hous- 
ton, himself the son of a Massachusetts man, who went 
down to Texas before the Civil War, was led by an acci- 
dental question to deliver an extempore indictment of the 
whole negro race under twelve heads then and there noted 
down as follows: 

(1) The old Negroes in slavery times were a good lot, 
but Negroes nowadays are worthless. 

(2) The Negro is the best laborer that the South ever 
had. 

(3) Education destroys the value of the Negro, by 
making him unwilling to work. 

(4) The South makes great sacrifices to educate the 
Negroes. 

(5) The Negroes on the farms often do well; but 
those are the old slaves. 

(6) The young Negroes will not work on the land but 
drift off, probably to the cities. 

(7) The pure Negro is much superior in character 
to the Mulattoes, who are the most vicious part of the race. 

(8) The mulatto is physically weak and he is rapidly 
dying out. 



NEGRO CHARACTER 

(9) Five sixths of all the Negroes in this city have 
some white blood. 

(10) The educated Negroes fill the prisons. 

(11) Booker T. Washington has good ideas. 

(12) Negroes must be " kept in their place," otherwise 
there will be general rapine and destruction. 

Some curious errors of perspective are discernible in 
this picture : the Negro is at the same time the best laborer 
and the worst laborer; the South continues to make great 
sacrifices to educate blacks who will not work and who 
fill the prisons ; the mulatto is at the same time dying out 
and furnishing five sixths of the colored population of a 
large city. Such generalizations are the daily food of 
the South. Judge Norwood, of Georgia, on retiring from 
the bench of the city court of Savannah, where he had 
tried twelve thousand colored people, recently left on rec- 
ord his formal opinion that the Negro never works except 
from necessity or compulsion, has no initiative, is brutal 
to his family, recognizes no government except force, 
knows neither ambition, honor nor shame, possesses no 
morals; and the judge protests against "the insanity of 
putting millions of semi-savages under white men's laws 
for their government." The mayor of Winona, Miss., pub- 
licly announces that " The negro is a lazy, lying, lustful 
animal, which no conceivable amount of training can 
transform into a tolerable citizen." Senator Tillman, of 
South Carolina, on the floor of the Senate has said : " So 
the poor African has become a fiend, a wild beast, seeking 
whom he may devour, filling our penitentiaries and our 
jails." Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, in his farewell 
message to the Legislature, in January, 1908, called the 
Negroes, who are in a majority in his state : " A race in- 
herently unmoral, ignorant and superstitious, with a con- 

93 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

genital tendency to crime, incapable unalterably of under- 
standing the meaning of free government, devoid of those 
qualities of mind and body necessary to self-control, and 
being unable to control themselves." 

One of the sources of confusion with regard to the 
Negro is that people speak of " the African Race " which 
they suppose to be pictured on the Eg3^ptian monuments, 
to be briefly mentioned by Herodotus, and to be in the 
same condition now in Africa as it was when first de- 
scribed. As a matter of fact, there are several native 
races, varying in color from the intensely black and un- 
couth Guinea Negro of the AVest Coast to 'the olive-brown 
Arabs of the Sahara desert, and in civilization from the 
primitive dwarf tribes of Central Africa to the organized 
kingdoms of the Zulus and the thriving states of the Cen- 
tral lake region. Many arguments as to the negro ch^fr- 
acter are based upon the supposed profound barbarism and 
cannibalism of all Africa. The truth is that the African 
tribes, with all their ferocity and immorality, had advanced 
farther in the path of civilization previous to their first 
contact with the Europeans than the North American 
Indians of the Atlantic and Mississippi regions; they had 
gone farther in the arts, had built up more numerous com- 
munities, and established a more complex society. The 
curse of Africa, from which the Indians were not free, 
was slavery and slave-hunting, which from time immemo- 
rial have led to ferocious wars and reckless destruction 
of life. On the side of religion, the African has built up 
a weird and emotional system, honeycombed with witch- 
craft and a belief in magic, stained with bloodshed and 
human sacrifice. Yet all explorers and residents in Af- 
rica find many attractive traits in the Negro; he loves a 
joke, makes a tolerable soldier, often shows faithful affec- 

94 



NEGRO CHARACTER 

tion for his leaders, and under the supervision of white 
officials, seems capable of a peaceful and happy life. 

That the character of the Negro should need to be a 
matter of absorbing interest to the Southern Whites and 
a study to Northern observers, is the fault of the Six- 
teenth Century European. The Negroes have for ages 
been in contact with white races on their northern and 
eastern borders ; Ethiopian captives were brought to Rome, 
and the black slave is a favorite character in the " Arabian 
Nights." But that this race, situated on the other side 
of the globe, should affect the commerce and obstruct the 
political development of America, is one of the oddities 
of history. The Negroes, who have never made a con- 
quest outside their own continent, who were first brought 
to Europe on the same footing as ostrich feathers and ele- 
phants, as objects of trade and as curiosities, have, through 
the greed and cruelty of our ancestors, planted a colony of 
ten million people in our land ; and other groups, mounting 
up to several millions, in the West Indies and Brazil. 

Many attempts are made to determine the ability of 
the Negro by what he has done in Africa and in Latin 
America. He has not lifted himself out of barbarism in 
his own continent, though he has founded large and pros- 
perous states carried on solely by Africans; and Winston 
Spencer Churchill, from his recent visit to the heart of 
Africa, sees reason to predict that he will form perma- 
nent communities. The curses of Africa for centuries have 
been inhuman superstitions and devastating slave raids, 
dignified by the name of wars, for which the white and 
Arab slave dealers are partly responsible. Torture of 
captives, sack of towns, murder of infants, coffles of slaves 
marching to a market, are not so far away from the prac- 
tice of European nations two or three centuries ago that 

95 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

we can brand them as evidence of irreclaimable barbarism. 
Pappenheim at Magdeburg and Lannes at the taking of 
Saragossa could match many of the worst crimes of the 
African impi on a raid, or of a white agent of the Congo 
Free State collecting his rubber tax. Protestant Germany 
and England left off the crudest treatment of supposed 
witches only about two centuries ago. Cannibalism and 
the slave trade seem now on their last legs in Africa, and 
those white men who have lived longest in the heart of 
Africa seem to have the largest hope that the Dark Con- 
tinent may be enlightened and a confidence in an African 
capacity for an existence much above the savage traditions. 
These hopes are based in most cases on the expectation 
that white people will furnish the government and direct 
the industries. Whatever Africa may do for itself, the 
one notable effort to create an African state on an An- 
glo-Saxon model has been a failure. The Republic of 
Liberia was founded nearly a century ago, as a means of 
regenerating Africa by Christian civilization diffused from 
this spot on the coast into the interior; it was to be an 
outport for tropical products and to furnish Africa an 
example of democratic state building. Liberia is the Af- 
rican state in which the United States is especially in- 
terested, for it was planted by American missionaries and 
agents of the Colonization Society; and has been an off- 
shoot and almost a colony of this country. From the first 
it has been cursed by malaria, by the inroads and pres- 
sure of savages, and by a situation off the world's highways 
of commerce. To be sure its 15,000 civilized people have 
a public revenue of about $300,000, witli a total import 
and export trade of about $1,000,000; but all efforts to 
induce a considerable number of Negroes from America 
to try their fortunes in Liberia have been failures. A col- 

96 



NEGRO CHARACTER 

ored magazine in Boston has had the humor and good- 
temper lately to reprint the following squib upon the 
opportunities in that country for the American Negro: 

Liberia's bridges, mills, and dams. 
Need many thousand Afro-Ams. 

Liberia's ewes, Liberia's lambs, 
Like black sheep, baa for Afro-Ams. 

Liberia's road, Liberia's trams. 
For steady jobs want Afro-Ams. 

The barber shops, like Uncle Sam's, 
Give hope to myriad Afro-Ams. 

There's bacon, hominy, yes, hams. 
For all industrious Afro-Ams. 

With faintest praise Liberia damns 
The slow-arriving Afro-Ams. 

Unless their woes at home are shams, 
Why don't they go, the Afro-Ams? 



The inquiry of the final stanza is to the point, for 
though the American Colonization Society is still in exist- 
ence, and within a few years has tried to send out a ship- 
load of Negroes, Liberia attracts almost nobody and is a 
failure, either as a tropical home for the American Negro 
or as a center of Christianity and civilization for Africa. 

How is it with the colonies and independent states of 
Americanized Africans in the West Indies, where there 
have been blacks for as much as four centuries? Of these 

97 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

communities Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, the 
Windward and Leeward Islands were, or have been until 
recently, European colonies. Cuba's population is about 
half Negro; and they come nearer social and political 
equality with the Whites than anywhere else in the world; 
but there the dominant element is the pure Spanish or 
Spanish mestizo. In Jamaica since the emancipation of 
1833 the races have had but one conflict, that of 1866, 
which was at the time thought to be due to the cruelty and 
panic of Governor E3rre. The blacks of Jamaica, to a large 
extent small proprietors, support themselves in the easy 
fashion of the tropics; but the 15,000 Whites who live 
among the 750,000 blacks seem less able than the like class 
in the Southern states to organize negro labor and make 
it profitable. The Negroes are taught to read and write, 
they have furnished thousands of acceptable laborers for 
the Panama Canal, and their death-rate is nearly down 
to the normal figures of the white people for their lati- 
tude. Their illiteracy, however, is about that of their 
brethren in the United States and nearly two thirds of all 
the children are illegitimate. Their government is prac- 
tically still, as for two centuries and a half, out of their 
hands and in control of the English. 

The Negroes in Hayti are popularly supposed to have 
deteriorated intellectually and morally. To be sure the 
alternating series of despotism and anarchy in that un- 
happy country are not very different from the course of 
things in the white community of Venezuela ; and it would 
be a great mistake to suppose that the Haytian Negroes 
when they became independent a century ago had absorbed 
the civilization of their Spanish and French masters ; most 
of them were still a fierce and intractable folk recently 
brought from Africa. Their experience, however, and 

98 



NEGKO CHARACTER 

that of their neighbors in Santo Domingo, throws light 
upon the capacity of the African to build up a state, for 
both these lands are wholly governed by people of the 
African race. Neither has gained stability or improved 
in education or morals in half a century, though the 
Haytians are trying to set forth one of the arts of civ- 
ilization by borrowing more money than they are willing 
to pay. The moral, or rather unmoral, conditions of this 
and other \Yest Indian islands are a fair basis for argu- 
ment as to the average character of the race. 

The experience of the race in the Northern states 
leads rather to negative than to positive conclusions as to 
their intellectual and moral power. Time was when there 
were slaves on Beacon Hill ; when Venus, " servant to 
Madam Wadsworth," was admitted to the First Church 
of Cambridge; and the Faculty of Harvard College warned 
the students not to consort with Titus, " servant of the 
late President Wads worth." The colonial Negroes, who 
in no Northern colony were more numerous than six or 
seven per cent of the population, have left an offspring 
to which, since the Civil War, has been added a consider- 
able immigration from the South. In 1900, 356,000 
Africans born in the South were living in the North, and 
that proportion has since steadily increased. Nobody can 
pretend that this movement has improved the conditions 
of the Northern states, and the Negroes themselves en- 
counter many hardships; they can vote, they get some 
small offices, and would get more if they could settle fac- 
tional quarrels and unite behind single candidates; they 
have full and equal rights before the courts ; they are com- 
monly admitted to the public schools. On the other hand, 
separate negro schools have been provided in Indianapo- 
lis, in some places in New Jersey, and are likely to spread 

99 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

farther. Partly because many trades unions will not re- 
ceive them, partly because they are thought to be less 
effective than Whites, partly from sheer race prejudice, 
they find many avenues of employment closed to them. 
Few people like them as neighbors, and though admitted 
to most Northern high schools and colleges they do not 
find that free intercourse of mind with mind which is not 
only one of the joys of living, but is a great upbuilder of 
character. 

The situation of the Negroes in the North is frankly 
discouraging, both from their own point of view and that 
of the Northern White. Here if anywhere the race ought 
to show those qualities of determination and thrift and 
uprightness which its friends desire for it. Many of the 
Northern Negroes live on the same plane as the white 
people ; many others do well, considering their lesser oppor- 
tunities; and as a whole they earn their living; for where 
the men are lazy the women take care of them. But they 
are the objects of a steady prejudice; the reason for the 
school separation is that parents do not wish their children 
to be on such terms of acquaintance that they can learn 
all that the negro children know. Throughout the North 
there is a distrust of the negro voter, a belief that the 
Negroes furnish more than their share of the criminals. 

To a large degree this is simply saying that the lowest 
part of the population is thought to be low ; people dislike 
Negroes for the same reason that they object to many 
other persons, whether foreign or American born ; the woe- 
ful difference is that any incompetent white individual may 
pull himself or push his children out of the slums and 
into association with the best, while color sets the Negro 
apart, no matter what his success in life; and the most 
respectable of them is treated as though responsible for 

100 



NEGRO CHARACTER 

the worst of his race. The door of opportunity is open 
in the North, but it does not open wide; the Northern 
colored man enters into what our ancestors called the 
half-way covenant; he, like his Southern brother, walks 
within the veil. Or is the bottom difficulty described by 
the immigrant from South Carolina to the North who 
said, " Yes, dere mought be more chances in New York 
than dere is in Charleston, but, please Gawd, 'pears like 
you ain't so likely to take dem chances." 

The fundamental reason why race relations in the 
South are regulated by the white people, and are circum- 
scribed by what they think best for themselves, is the 
universal white belief that the African is of an inferior 
race, so inferior that he cannot be trusted to take a part 
in the political life of the community, or even to manage 
his own affairs. That opinion is temperately stated by 
Thomas Nelson Page as follows : " After long, elaborate, 
and ample trial the Negro race has failed to discover the 
qualities which have inhered in every race of which history 
gives the record, which has advanced civilization, or has 
shown capacity to be itself greatly advanced." It is bru- 
tally stated by Governor Vardaman : " God Almighty 
created the Negro for a menial — ^he is essentially a servant. 
. . . When left to himself, he has universally gone back 
to the barbarism of his native jungles. While a few mixed 
breeds and freaks of the race may possess qualities which 
justify them to aspire above that station, the fact remains 
that the race is fit for that and nothing more." 

The supposed inferiority of the negro race is not a 
foregone conclusion. First it rests on the tacit assumption 
that there is a " negro race " which can be distinguished 
from the white race, not only by color but also by apti- 
tudes, moral standards and habits of mind. Some experts 

101 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

in the South, who have studied the race as scientific men 
study the Indians of the Amazon, declare that they ure 
unable to find any large body of traits which all Negroes 
possess; that they observe in no colored person character- 
istics which cannot be found in some Whites; and that 
they possess every variety of intellectual power and moral 
capacity. Then there is the question of the mulatto, who 
in his race mixture may be more white man than Negro. 
Is he to be included in the general indictment of inferior- 
ity? And, finally, what is to be argued from the men of 
power whom the negro race has displayed — a few in 
slavery days, and many in these later times? 

The most extravagant statement of negro inferiority 
is that the worst white man is better than the best Negro 
because of the supernal quality of the white race. A 
Southern writer talks of " The endless creations of art 
and science and religion and law and literature and every 
other form of activity, the full-voiced choir of all the 
Muses, the majestic morality, the hundred-handed philos- 
ophy, the manifold wisdom of civilization — all of this in- 
finite cloud of witnesses gather swarming upon us from the 
w^iole firmament of the past and proclaim with pentacos- 
tal tongue the glory and supremacy of Caucasian man." 
Judged by their achievements from the dawn of history 
to the present moment, the white race has indubitably 
achieved immensely more than the black race, but it has 
also achieved more than its own ancestors whom Taine thus 
characterizes : " Huge white bodies, . . . with fierce, blue 
eyes, . . . ravenous stomachs, ... of a cold tempera- 
ment, slow to love, home stayers, prone to brutal drunken- 
ness: . . . Pirates at first: . . . seafaring, war, and pil- 
lage was their whole idea of a freeman's work. ... Of 
all barbarians . . . the most cruelly ferocious." 

102 



NEGRO CHARACTER 

After all, a race cannot be proved inferior by what it 
has not done; the United States as a war-making power 
has so far been inferior to the Germans and the Japanese, 
but its strength has not been tested. The real question is, 
does the N'egro now, in the things that he is actually 
doing, show as much power as low and ignorant white peo- 
ple who have had no more than his opportunity? The 
Reconstruction governments, which are the stock in trade 
of those who decry the Negro, are little to the point, be- 
cause they were to a considerable degree engineered by 
Whites, and because they lasted only from one to eight 
years. On the other hand, the great powers of a few 
select members of the race, and the excellent mentality 
and character of many others, are not proof that its aver- 
age stamina is up to that of the white man; they must be 
tested by what they do. 

The African in America has had little opportunity to' 
work out a civilization of his own, and it certainly cannot 
be charged against him as a fault that he has accepted 
the white civilization which was at first forced upon him. 
As one of their own number says : " The Negro has ad- 
vanced in exactly the same fashion as the white race has 
advanced, by taking advantage of all that has gone before. 
Other men have labored and we have entered into their 
labors." Yet, having accepted a heritage of literature, 
law and religion, from his white brother, the Negro can- 
not escape from the standard of the white man among 
whom he lives who have had like opportunities; and if 
he does not measure up to it it is impossible to avoid the 
conclusion that the race is inferior. Either the Negro 
is a white man with a black skin, who after a reasonable 
term of probation must now take the responsibilities of 
equal character (though not as yet of equal performance), 

103 



THE SOUTHERX SOITTH 

or else it must be admitted that, though a man, he is a 
somewhat different kind of man from the White. 

A favorite Southern phrase is : " The Negro is a child," 
and many considerable people accord him a child's privi- 
leges. The ignorant black certainly has a child's fondness 
for fun, freedom from care for the morrow, and in- 
capacity to keep money in his pocket; but some planters 
will talk to you all day about the shrewdness with which 
he manages to get money out of the unsuspecting white 
man; and when it comes to serious crime, it is not every 
judge who makes allowance for childishness in the race. 
The theory that the negro mind ceases to develop after 
adolescence perhaps has something in it; but there are 
too many hard-headed and far-sighted persons, both full 
bloods and mulattoes, who have unusual minds, to permit 
the problem to be settled by the phrase, " The Negro is 
a child." 

Genuine friends and well-wishers of the Negro feel 
intensely the irresponsibility of the race. A business man 
who all his life has been associated with them says : " He 
has all the good qualities of the lazy, thriftless person, 
he is amiable, generous and tractable. He has no activity 
in wrongdoing. He has the imitative gift in a remarkable 
degree, and always I love him for his faults, he is without 
craftiness, without greed. You will find no Rockefellers 
nor Carnegies among them. He is not a scoundrel from 
calculation. . . . He takes as his pattern the highest type of 
white man he is acquainted with. He has no sort of regard 
for what he thinks the poor white trash. ... I don't know 
how best to help him, but I like him, like him and his 
careless devil-may-care ways. I like him because his whole 
soul is not absorbed in this craze for getting money. I 
like him because he does no evil by premeditation, because 

104 



NEGRO CHARACTER 

he sees no evil in everything he does, then goes and does it. 
I like him because some da}^ in the distant past I was like 
him." 

The main issue must be fairly faced by the friends 
as well as the enemies of the colored race. Measuring 
it by the white people of the South, or by the correspond- 
ingly low populations of Southern or Northern cities, the 
Negroes as a people appear to be considerably below the 
Whites in mental and moral status. There are a million 
or two exceptions, but they do not break the force of the 
eight or nine millions of average Negroes. A larger pro- 
portion of the mulattoes than of the pure bloods come up 
to the white race in ability; but if fifty thousand people 
in the negro quarter of New Orleans or on the central 
Alabama plantations be set apart and compared with a 
similar number of the least promising Whites in the same 
city or counties, fewer remarkable individuals and less 
average capacity would be found. Race measured by race, 
the Negro is inferior, and his past history in Africa and 
in America leads to the belief that he will remain in- 
ferior in race stamina and race achievement. 



CHAPTER IX 

NEGRO LIFE 

THE negro problem in the South cannot be solved, 
nor is much light thrown upon it by the conditions 
of the race elsewhere. The immediate and pressing 
issue is the widespread belief that the great numbers of 
them in the South are an unsatisfactory element of the 
population. The total Negroes in the United States in 
1900, the last available figures, was 8,834,000. They are, 
however, very unequally distributed throughout the Union ; 
in twenty Northern states and territories there are only 
50,000 altogether; in the states from Pennsylvania north- 
ward there are about 400,000; from Ohio westward about 
500,000 ; while in the one state of Georgia there are over a 
million; 7,898,000 lived in the fifteen former slaveholding 
states; 7,187,000 in the eleven seceding states; and 5,055,- 
000 in the seven states of the Lower South. At the rate of 
increase shown during the last forty years there will soon 
be 10,000,000 in the South alone. These figures have since 
1900 been somewhat disturbed by the natural growth of 
population and by the interstate movement, so that the 
proportion of blacks in the North is doubtless now a little 
larger; but the fact remains that the habitat of the black 
is in the Southern^- States. Even there, great variations 
occur from state to state, and from place to place. In 
Briscoe County, Texas, there are 1,253 Whites and not a 

106 



NEGRO LIFE 

single Negro; in Beaufort County, S. C, there are 3,349 
Whites and 32,137 Africans; on the island of St. Helena in 
this last county are 8,700 colored and 125 white people; 
and on Fenwick's Island there are something like 100 
Negroes and not a white person. 

As between country and city, the Negro is a rural man ; 
the only Southern cities containing over 50,000 of them 
in the Lower South are New Orleans and perhaps Atlanta ; 
in the former slaveholding states out of 8,000,000 Negroes 
only about 1,000,000 lived in cities of 8,000 people and 
upwards, which is less in proportion than the Whites. In 
a very black district like the Delta of the Mississippi they 
form a majority of the city population. In 72 of the 
Southern places having a population of 2,500 or more at 
least half the population is African; but their drift city- 
ward is less marked than that of the white people, eighty- 
five per cent of all the Negroes live outside of cities and 
towns. The Negroes have no race tradition of city life in 
Africa, are no fonder than Whites of moving from country 
to city, and throw no unendurable strain on the city gov- 
ernments. 

A favorite assertion is that the American Negroes are 
either dying out or nearing the point where the death- 
rate will exceed the birth-rate. Hoffmann, in his " Eace 
Traits/' has examined this question in a painstaking way, 
and proves conclusively that both North and South the 
death-rate of the black race is much higher than that of 
the Whites. In Philadelphia, for instance, the ratios are 
30 to 1,000 against 20 to 1,000. Upon this point there 
are no trustworthy figures for the whole country; but an 
eighth of the Negroes live in the so-called " registration 
area," which includes most of the large cities ; and in that 
area the death-rate in 1900 is computed at 30 to 1,000 for 
8 107 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

Negroes and 17 to 1,000 for the Whites. This excess is 
largely due to the frightful mortality among negro chil- 
dren, which is almost double that among Whites in the 
same community. In Washington in 1900 one fifth of the 
white children under a year old died and almost one half 
of the colored children. 

When Hoffmann attempts to show that the negro 
death-rate is accelerating, he is obliged to depend upon 
scanty figures from a few Southern cities. In Charleston, 
for instance, the records show in the forties (a period of yel- 
low fever) a white death-rate of 16 and a colored death-rate 
of 20, against recent rates of 22 and 44 to the 1,000 re- 
spectively; but in New Orleans Mr. Hoffmann's own fig- 
ures show a reduction of the colored death-rate from 52 
in the fifties to 40 in the nineties. The only possible con- 
clusion from these conflicting results is that the earlier 
mortality statistics on which he relies are few and un- 
reliable. 

Nevertheless, the present conditions of negro mortality 
are frightful. They appear to be due primarily to igno- 
rance and neglect in the care of children, and secondly, 
to an increase of dangerous diseases. The frequent state- 
ment that consumption was almost unknown among Ne- 
groes in slavery times is abundantly disproved by Hoff- 
mann; but the disease is undoubtedly gaining, for much 
the same reason that it ravages the Indians in Alaska, 
namely, that the people now live in close houses which 
become saturated with the virus of the disease. Syphilis 
is also fearfully prevalent, and the most alarming state- 
ments are made by physicians who have practice or hos- 
pital service among the Negroes; but the testimony as to 
the extent of the disease is conflicting, and there are other 
race elements in the United States which are depleted by 

108 



I 



NEGRO LIFE 

venereal disease. The blacks also suffer from the use of 
liquor, though drunkards are little known among the cot- 
ton hands; but drugs, particularly cocaine and morphine, 
are widely used. In one country store a clerk has been 
known to make up a hundred and fifty packages of cocaine 
in a single night. 

Notwithstanding the undoubtedly high death-rate, the 
birth-rate is so much greater that at every census the 
negro race is shown to be still gi-owing; as Murphy says: 
" Whenever the Negro has looked down the lane of an- 
nihilation he has always had the good sense to go around 
the other way." The census of 1870 was so defective that 
it must be thrown out of account, but the negro popula- 
tion, which was about 4,400,000 in 1860, and 6,600,000 in 
1880, had grown to 8,800,000 in 1900. It is true that the 
rate of increase is falling off both absolutely and in pro- 
portion to the white race. In the South Central group of 
states, which includes most of the Lower South, the popu- 
lation increased about forty-eight per cent from 1860 to 
1880 and only thirty-nine per cent in the next double de- 
cade; while the white population has in both periods in- 
creased at about sixty per cent, with a rising ratio. 

The urban Negro has a high death-rate, not only in the 
South but in Northern cities; in Boston and Indianapolis 
the birth-rate of the Negroes does not keep pace with the 
deaths, and they would disappear but for steady accessions 
from the South. The Southern blacks on the land are 
doing better and are growing steadily; neither statistics 
nor observations support the theory that the Negro is dying 
out in the South; and comparatively slight changes in re- 
sort to skilled physicians, in the spread of trained nurses, 
in infants' food, may check the child mortality. On the 
other hand, any increase in thrift and in saving habits will 

109 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

almost certainly affect the size of families and diminish 
the average birth-rate. 

The very words " The Negro " suggest the misleading 
idea that there is within the Southern states a clearly 
defined negro race. In fact, physically, intellectually, and 
morally, it is as much subdivided as the white race. 
What is supposed to be the pure African type is the 
Guinea Negro, very black, very uncouth, and hard to civ- 
ilize. What these people are is easy to find out, for a 
great part of the inhabitants of the Sea Islands of South 
Carolina and Georgia are of that race and speak what 
is called the Gullah dialect, which Joel Chandler Harris 
has preserved in his " Daddy Jack." Besides these chil- 
dren and grandchildren of imported Negroes there is near 
Mobile a small group of sturdy people perfectly well known 
to have been brought into the United States in 1858 in the 
yacht Wanderer. These may be part of a cargo from which 
Senator Tillman's family bought a gang, and he says of 
them: "These poor wretches, half starved as they have 
been, were the most miserable lot of human beings — the , 
nearest to the missing link with the monkey I have ever || 
put my eyes on." 

The whole African problem is immeasurably compli- 
cated and contorted by the fact that of the Negroes in 
the United States not more than four fifths at the highest 
are pure blacks. The remainder are partially Caucasian 
in race, and occupy a midway position, often of unhappi- 
ness and sometimes of downright misery. As to the num- 
ber of mulattoes, there is no trustworthy statistical state- 
ment; the census figures for 1890 reported that out of 
the total "negro" population eighteen per cent was mu- 
latto in the northern group of Southern states, and about 
fifteen per cent in the Lower South; but these figures are 

110 



NEGEO LIFE 

confessedly defective and are probably vitiated by in- 
cluding some members of the lighter negro races as mu- 
lattoes. 

Shannon, in his " Eacial Integrity," while unhesitat- 
ingly accepting these very imperfect figures, attempts to 
supplement them by calculations made from an inspection 
of crowds; and it is his opinion that in the smaller cities, 
the towns and villages, about twenty-two per cent are 
mulattoes — " and that unless this amalgamation is effectu- 
ally checked in some way, this ratio will continue to rise 
until practically the whole of the negro race will come to 
be of mixed blood." Shufeldt, in his " The Negro, A Men- 
ace," asserts that at least sixty per cent of the Negroes 
have some white blood, and is confident that the proportion 
is increasing. The census authorities of 1900 commit 
themselves only to the generalization that the mulattoes 
are most numerous in proportion to the number of Whites 
in any given community. As to the testimony of observers, 
there is every variety of appearance. You may see crowds 
of Negroes at a railway station in Georgia, of whom two 
thirds are purely mulatto ; you may visit islands in South 
Carolina in which not one fortieth part have white blood. 

The number of mulattoes is less important than their 
character and general relation to the negro problem. 
Most Southerners assert and doubtless believe that the mu- 
latto is physically weak; but you see them working side 
by side with pure blacks, as roustabouts and plantation 
hands, and some planters tell you that one is as good as 
another in the field. People assert that mulattoes are more 
susceptible to disease, so that they are dying out; and 
some authorities say that there are no mulatto children 
after the third or fourth generation. There is no scientific 
ground for these assertions, and one of the highest medical 

111 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

authorities in the South is of the conviction that except 
for a somewhat greater liability to tuberculosis they are 
as healthy as the full bloods. Of course, the greater num- 
ber of mulattoes in the United States are the children of 
mulattoes, and to what extent the proportion is kept up by 
further accessions from the white race is absolutely im- 
possible to determine. Many statements on the whole sub- 
ject come from people who hate the mulatto and like to 
think that he is a poor creature who is going to relieve the 
world of a disagreeable problem by leaving it. 

Erom the same source comes the assertion that the mu- 
latto is fundamentally vicious, frequently made by people 
who argue in the same breath that the so-called progress 
of the negro race means nothing, because it is all due to 
mulattoes. Tlie mulattoes do include a much larger pro- 
portion of the educated than the pure bloods, and hence 
are more likely to furnish such criminals as forgers and 
embezzlers ; but there seems no ground for the widespread 
belief that the mulattoes are more criminal than the pure 
blacks. That there is a special temptation more likely 
to come to some members of the mulatto section than to 
the pure black was suggested by a Southern gentleman 
when he said : " The black girls won't work and the yel- 
low girls don't have to, they are looked after ! " When 
asked to suggest who it was who looked after them, the 
conversation languished. The question of the character 
of the mulatto is a serious one, because most of the spokes- 
men and markedly successful people of the race are not 
pure bloods ; and because of the unhappy position of thou- 
sands of men and women who have the aptitudes, the 
tastes, and the educations of white people; yet in the com- 
mon estimation are bracketed with the rudest, most ig- 
norant and lowest of a crude, ignorant and low race. 

112 



NEGRO LIFE 

The status of the Negroes is in many ways altered by 
the steady though limited movement from South to North. 
The Negroes are subject to waves of excitement, and in 
1879 a colored agitator created a furore for colonization 
by spreading abroad the news that in Liberia there was a 
" bread tree '' and another tree which ran lard instead of 
sap, so that all you had to do was to cut from one and 
catch from the other. A systematic effort has been made 
to settle colored people in Indiana, in order to hold that 
State in the Eepublican column ; and there are now prob- 
ably nearly a hundred thousand there, a third of whom 
are settled in Indianapolis, where they furnish a race 
problem of growing seriousness. The Negroes in the city 
of Washington have increased eight times in forty years. 
They have repeatedly been brought into the North as 
strike breakers, often with the result of serious riots. In 
1879 thousands of them left various parts of the South 
for Kansas, and in some cases the river boats refused to 
take them. As a result some Southern states passed 
statutes requiring heavy license fees (sometimes as much 
as $1,000 a year) from labor agents who should induce 
people to go to other states. Nevertheless, there are now 
over 50,000 in Kansas and over 100,000 in the neighboring 
new State of Oklahoma. At present there are in New 
York and Philadelphia nearly a hundred agents who draw 
Negroes northward, and they bring thousands of people 
every year, chiefly to enter domestic service. The move- 
ment is ill organized and does not by any means include 
the most thrifty, since passage money is often advanced 
by the agents. 

The numbers of the Negroes are not in themselves 
alarming. In most Southern states they are fewer in 
proportion than the foreign element in many Northern 

113 



n 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 



states. The hostility to the Negro is not based on his 
numbers, but on his supposed inferiority of character. 
On this point there is a painful lack of accurate knowledge, 
because there is so little contact between the Whites and 
their negro neighbors. The white opinion of the blacks 
is founded with little knowledge of the home life of the 
other race. How many white people in the city of Atlanta, 
for instance, have actually been inside the house of a pros- 
perous, educated Negro? How many have actually sat 
over the fire of a one-room negro cabin? The Southern 
Whites, with few exceptions, teach no Negroes, attend no 
negro church services, penetrate into no negro society, 
and they see the Negro near at hand chiefly as unsatisfac- 
tory domestic servants, as field hands of doubtful profit, 
as neglectful and terrified patients, as clients in criminal 
suits or neighborhood squabbles, as prisoners in the dock, 
as convicted criminals, as wretched objects for the ven- 
geance of a mob. 

An encouraging sign is the disposition of both white 
and colored investigators to study the Negro in his home. 
Professor DuBois has directed such researches both in 
Southern cities and in the open country; there are also 
two monographs upon the religious life of the Negro, one 
directed by Vanderbilt University and the other by At- 
lanta University; and Mr. Odum, of the University of 
Mississippi, has prepared a study upon the Negro in 
fifty towns in various states which, still in manuscript, is 
one of the most instructive inquiries ever made into negro 
life. 

Naturally, such investigations are easier in the cities, 
and we know much more about the urban Negro, a sixth 
of the population, than of the rural black, who are five 
sixths. In the large cities there is an African population, 

114 



NEGRO LIFE 

a considerable part of which is prosperous. Here are the 
best colored schools, the greatest demand for African labor, 
the largest opportunity for building up small businesses 
among the Negroes themselves. Here are to be found 
most of the rich or well-to-do Negroes; and there is a 
large contingent of steady men employed in all kinds of 
capacities, about whom there is little complaint. On the 
other hand, a broad fringe of the population lives in 
houses or rooms actually less spacious and less decent than 
the one-room cabin in the fields. This floating and un- 
steady part of the negro race finds a favorable habitat in 
the towns and small cities, where there is less opportunity 
for steady employment than in the large cities. From this 
class come the domestic servants, who will be considered 
in a later chapter. 

The typical social life of the Negro is that of the field 
laborer, who lives in a poor and crude way. The most 
common residence is the one-room house, without a glass 
window, set in a barren and unfenced waste, with a few 
wretched outhouses, the worst cabins being on the land 
of the least progressive and humane planters. You may 
see on the land of a wealthy White one-room houses with 
chinks between the logs such that the rain drives into 
them, the tenant family crowded into the space between 
the fireplace and the unenticing beds, dirty clothing hang- 
ing about, hardly a chair to sit upon, outside the house 
not a paling or a building of any kind, and pigs rooting 
on the ground under the floor. On a tolerable Mississippi 
plantation with seventy-four families, seventeen had one- 
room cabins, and one of those families comprised eleven 
persons. Some Southerners have a theory that you can 
be sure that a cabin with a garden is occupied by a White ; 
but that is a fallacy, for there are many negro gardens, 

115 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

although some planters prohibit them on the ground that 
they will become weed spots. In the cities the Negroes 
live for the most part in settlements by themselves, in 
which there are miserable tenements, usually owned by 
white people and no better than the one-room country 
house. Of course, thrifty colored people in country or city 
are able to build comfortable houses for themselves. 

Inasmuch as both father and mother work either in 
the fields or in domestic service, there is little family life 
either in country or city. The food is poor and monoton- 
ous; it is chiefly salt pork, bacon, corn bread (usually 
pone), and some sort of molasses. Fresh meat is almost 
impossible to get outside of town, chickens are raised 
though not very plentiful, vegetables are few. For little 
children this diet is intolerable, and that is why so many 
of them die in infancy. Close observers declare that Ne- 1 
gi'oes are brutal to their children, but one may be much 
among them without seeing any instances. They are also 
accused of deserting their old people ; children often wan- ' 
der away and lose track of their parents, but you will find i 
districts where the old are well looked after by their kin- j 
dred. The most serious interference in family life is the I 
field work of the women, and the breaking up of families 
by the desertion of the father; but somehow in all these 
family jars the children are seldom left without anyone 
to care for them. 

Public amusements are almost wanting for the Negro. 
They are commonly not admitted to white theaters, con- 
certs, and other similar performances. In the country 
there is nothing better than to crowd the plantation store 
of a Saturday night in a sort of club. Few of them read 
for pleasure, and there is little to relieve the monotony. 
Perhaps for that reason they are fond of going about the 

116 



NEGRO LIFE 

country, and you see them everywhere on horseback, or in 
little bull carts, or on foot. They will spend their last dol- 
lar for an excursion on the railroad, and at the turn of the 
year, January 1st, many of them may be seen moving. 
The circus is one of the greatest delights of the Negro; 
he will travel many miles for this pleasure. The field 
hand is thrown back on coarse enjoyments; hard drink- 
ing is frequent among both men and women, yet the habit- 
ual drunkard is rare ; the country Negro is fond of dances, 
which often turn out unseemly and lead to affrays and 
murders. 

For their social and jovial needs Negroes find some 
satisfaction in their church life. Their own statisticians 
claim 3,254,000 communicants worshiping in 27,000 
church buildings, of which the greater part are in the coun- 
try. Contrary to expectation forty years ago, the Negroes 
have been little attracted to the Catholic Church, which 
is so democratic in its worship, and possesses a ritual which 
might be expected to appeal to negro nature. Nearly half 
the church members are some sort of Baptists, and half of 
the rest adhere to the Methodist denominations. Some city 
churches have buildings costing twenty, thirty, and even 
fifty thousand dollars, and they are pertinacious about 
raising money for construction and other similar purposes. 

These churches do not represent an advanced type of 
piety. Conversions are violent and lapses frequent, and 
the minister is not certain to lend the weight of his con- 
duct to his words. There are many genuinely pious and 
hard-working ministers, but at least half of them in both 
city and country are distrusted by the Whites and discred- 
ited by their own people. Simply educating the minister 
does not solve the problem, for what the people want is 
somebody who will arouse them to a pleasurable excite- 

117 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ment. Tliat is, the present type of piety among the ne- 
gro churches is about that which prevailed among the 
white people along the frontier fifty years ago, and which 
has not entirely died out in the backwoods and the moun- 
tains. A genuine colored service is extremely picturesque, 
the preacher working like a locomotive going up a heavy 
grade, while the hearers assist him with cries of, " Talk 
to urn, preacher — Great God — Ha! Ha! You is right, 
brudder — Preaching now — Talk 'bout um — Holy Lord." 
Then the brethren are called upon to pray; in that musi- 
cal intoning which is so appropriate for the African voice; 
then the minister lines out the hymns and the congrega- 
tion bursts out into that combination of different minor 
keys which is the peculiar gift of the negro race. 

Another negro enjoyment is the secret orders, which 
are almost as numerous as the churches and probably have 
as many male members. These societies are first of all 
burial and benefit orders with dues ranging from fifty 
cents a month upward, for which sick benefits of four dol- 
lars a week are paid and about forty dollars for burial. 
The societies build lodge houses not only in cities but in 
plantation regions; and the judgment of those who have 
most carefully examined them is that they are on the whole 
a good thing. They give training in public speaking and 
in common action; they furnish employment to managers 
and clerks ; and their considerable funds are for the most 
part honestly managed. Some of them publish news- 
papers chiefly devoted to publishing the names of officers 
and members. In Mississi})pi there are thirty-four licensed 
oiders with 8,000 members. They carry $30,000,000 of 
risks, and in a year paid $430,000 to policy holders. Nat- 
urally they have rather high-sounding names, such as 
" Grand Court of Calanthe," " Lone Star of Race Pride," 

118 



NEGEO LIFE 

" United Brethren of Friendship and Sisters of Mysteri- 
ous Ten/' " Sons and Daughters of I Will Arise." Some 
efforts are making to build up national societies such as 
the " Eoyal Trust Company " and " The Ethiopian Pro- 
gressive Association of America/' which, according to its 
own statement, is " incorporated with an authorized Capi- 
tal Stock a hundred times larger than the next most 
heavily capitalized Negro corporation on Earth. It is 
designed to fraternize, build and cement the vital interests 
of Negroes throughout the world into one colossal Union." 
The order and the church are both social clubs and in- 
clude a good part of the race both in city and country, 
anjd these organizations are the work of the last forty years, 
for in slavery times the negro churches were closely 
watched by the Whites, and secret societies would have 
been impossible. 



CHAPTER X 

THE NEGRO AT WORK 



NOBODY accepts clmrcli or fraternal orders as the 
measure of the Xegro's place in the community, 
for the gospel which he hears most often is the 
gospel of work; and that comes less from the preacher than 
from the reformer; as DuBois says: " Plain it is to us that 
what the world seeks through desert and wild we have with- 
in our threshold— a stalwart laboring force, suited to the 
semi-tropics." The labor system and labor ideal of the 
South are very different from those of the Xorth. First of 
all, there is the old tradition of slavery times that manual 
toil is ignoble; that it is menial to handle prime materials, 
and to buy and sell goods across the counter. But some- 
body must perform hard labor if the community is to go 
on; and there is an immense field for uneducated men. 
Besides the so-called "public works "—that is, turpentine, 
sawmills, building levees and railroads, and clearing land- 
there is the pulling and hauling and loading in the ports, 
the rough work of oil mills and furnaces and mines, and 
above all the raising of cotton, where the demand for labor 
is always greater tlian the supply. 

Some of this labor is done by white gangs, and many of 
the blacks are engaged in other and higher pursuits; but 
the chief function of the Negro in the South is the rough 
labor which in the North was once chiefly performed by 

120 



THE NEGRO AT WORK 

Irishmen, later by Italians, and now in many places by 
Slavs. This vast industrial system is almost wholly offi- 
cered by Whites, who are the owners, employers, and man- 
agers of nearly every piece of property in the South on 
which laborers are employed. They set, so far as they can, 
the terms of emplo}Tiient ; but what they get in actual work 
is settled by the Negroes, notwithstanding a condition of 
dependence hard to realize in the North. It is firmly 
fixed in the average white employer's mind that the Ne- 
gro exists in order to work for him, and that every attempt 
to raise the Negro must steer clear of any suspicion that 
it will lead him to abandon work for the white man. The 
slow drift of Negroes to the towns and cities cannot be 
prevented, nor some shifting from plantation to planta- 
tion ; but the white man's ideal is that the Negro is to stay 
where he is, and hundreds of thousands of them are liv- 
ing within sight of the spot where they were born. 

Therefore, whoever wishes to know the conditions of 
the typical Negro must look for them on the plantation, 
where he is almost the only laborer, and is at present pro- 
digiously wanted. As a keen Southern observer says: 
"The protection of the Negro is the scarcity of labor"; 
for it is literally true that some plantations could profit- 
ably employ more than double the hands that they can 
get. Nevertheless it is an axiom in the South that "the 
nigger will not work." Thus General Stephen D. Lee 
gives currency to the declaration that " It is a fact known 
to those best acquainted with the negro race since the war, 
that more and more of them are becoming idle, and are not 
giving us as good work as they used to do." Another au- 
thority says : " Some few of the race are reliable — many 
hundreds are not. The farmer cannot get his land turned 
in the winter, because ninety hundredths of these laborers 

121 



THE SOUTHERX SOUTH 

liave not made up their minds as to what they want to do 
in the coming year. All would go to town if fuel was Rot 
high and house rent must be paid." An engineer in charge 
of large gangs in Galveston says he never would employ 
Negroes if he could help it, because they cannot be de- 
pended upon to rush work in an emergency. A planter 
met on a Mississippi steamer declares that wage hands at 
a dollar a day would not actually put in more than two 
thirds of the hours of labor; and would accomplish no 
more in two weeks than a cropper working on shares would 
do in two days. A Negro who employs large numbers of 
men says : " If a Negro can get what he wants without 
working he will do it." 

Anotlier standard accusation is that the Negro will 
not work steadily; that he never turns up on Monday, 
and will leave for frivolous reasons; that if he has 
been working for five dollars a week and you raise his , 
wages to ten dollars he will simply work the three days 
necessary to earn the five dollars, having adjusted himself 
to that scale. In this charge there is a good deal of truth, 
but the difficulty is not confined to the African race. 
Northern employers are well acquainted with the hand 
who never works on Monday; and in the cotton mills of 
South Carolina, which are carried on solely by white labor, 
it is customary to have a " Reserve of Labor " of one 
fourth or one fifth in order to meet the case of the hands 
who wish to go fishing, or simply are not willing to work 
six days a week. Probably the remedy for the Negro is 
to increase his wants to the point where he cannot satisfy 
them by less than a whole week's work. 

As to the general accusation that the Negro will not 
work, many white employers scout the suggestion. A 
brickmaker in St, Louis has for years employed them and 

122 



THE NEGRO AT WOEK 

likes them better than any other kind of labor. A Florida 
lumberman says : " I would not give one black man in the 
lumber camps of the South for three Italians, or three of 
any other foreigners. We can't get along without them, 
and for one, I don't want to try." And planter after 
planter will tell you that, however it may be with his 
neighbors, he has no trouble in keeping his people up to 
their work. 

Another reason for skepticism is what one sees as one 
goes through the country. In the first place, enormous 
amounts of cotton are raised where there is nothing but 
negro labor. In the second place, even in winter, the season 
of the year when the Negro is least busy, there are plenty 
of evidences that he is at work and likely to keep at it. 
He may be seen at work on his own little farm, taking 
care of his stock, picking his cotton, fixing up or adding 
to his house, his fifteen-year-old girl plowing with one 
mule. A Negro's farm is generally more slovenly than 
a white man's, but the crops are raised. You see the hired 
hands on the great plantations, driving four-mule teams, 
working in the gins, coming for directions about breaking 
ground. The truth is that the Negro on the land is do- 
ing well, far better than might be expected from people 
who have so little outlook and hope of improvement, work- 
ing more intelligently and doing better than the fellahin 
of Egypt, the ryots of India, the native Filipino, quite as 
well as the lowest end of the Mountain Whites- and the 
remnants of the lowland Poor Whites. It is a race-slan- 
der, refutable by any honest investigator, that the Amer- 
ican Negro as a race is unwilling to work. 

It is another question how far they are competent to 
act as foremen or independent workers. An iron manufac- 
turer in Alabama says he has found that the moment Ne- 
9 123 



THE SOUTHERiST SOUTH 

groes are promoted to anything requiring thinking power 
they fail disastrously, and ruin all the machinery put in, 
their charge; as miners they handle tools with skill just 
as long as they are furnished the motive power, but they 
have little discretion or ambition. On the other hand, 
the writer has seen in the Riclimond Locomotive Works 
white men working under negro gang bosses without fric- 
tion; and in many parts of the South the building trades 
are almost wholly in the hands of blacks. 

^Y[\y should the belief of the African's incapacity be 
so widely disseminated? First, because nineteen twenti- 
eths of the people who talk about the lazy Negro have no 
personal knowledge of the field hand at work. Their im- 
pression of the race is gained from the thriftless and irreg- 
ular Negroes in the towns and cities. If we formed out 
notions of Xortliern farm industry from the gypsies, the 
dock loafers, the idle youths shooting craps behind a board 
fence, we should believe a generalization that Northern 
farmers are lazy. The shiftless population living on odd 
jobs and the earnings of the women as domestic servants, 
committing petty crimes and getting into rows with the 
■^hite youths, cannot be more than one tenth of the Ne- 
groes, and the poorest tenth at that. 

Domestic service is the most exasperating point of 
contact between the races. It has been reduced to a sys- 
tem of day labor, for not one in a hundred of the house 
servants spend the night in the place where they are em- 
ployed. Great numbers of the women are the only wage 
earners in their family and leave their little children at 
home day after day so that they may care for the chil- 
dren of white families. Some mistresses scold and fume 
and threaten, some have the patience of angels; in both 
cases the service is irregular and wasteful. Nobody ever 

124 



1 



THE NEGRO AT WORK 

feels sure that a servant will come the next morning. Most 
of the well-to-do families in the South feed a second fam- 
ily out of the baskets taken home by the cook; and in 
thousands of instances the basket goes to some member 
of a third family favored by the cook. Hence the little 
song taken down from a Negro's lips by a friend in Mis- 
sissippi : 

^' I doan' has to wuk so ha'd, 
'Cause I got a gal in de white folks' ya'd; 
And ebry ebnin' at half past eight 
I comes along to de gyarden gate; 
She gibs me buttah an' sugah an' lard — 
I doan' has to wuk so ha'd!" 

Let one story out of a hundred illustrate this trouble. 
A newly married couple, both accustomed to handsome 
living, set up their own establishment in a Mississippi 
town, in a new house, well furnished and abounding in 
heirlooms of mahogany and china; the only available can- 
didate for waitress is a haughty person who begins by 
objecting to monthly payments, and shortly announces to 
her n^jstress : " I ain't sure I want to stay here, but I will 
givo you a week's trial." The patient and good-natured 
Ir^dy accepts the idea of a week's experience on both sides, 
but before that time expires the girl comes rushing up in 
a fury to announce that " I'm gwine ter leave just now, 
kase you don't give yo' help 'nough to eat." It develops 
that she has had exactly the same breakfast as the white 
family, except that the particular kind of bacon of which 
she is fond has run short. There is plenty of bacon of 
another brand, but that will not satisfy her; she will not 
/ stay " where people don't get 'nough to eat." She there- 
upon shakes the dust of the place off her feet and black- 

125 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

lists the family in the whole place, making it almost im- 
possihle for them to find another servant; and probably 
some other white mistress within a week takes up this 
hungry person as being the best that she can do. 

Other people have more agreeable tales of good-tem- 
pered and humorous servants; and the negro question 
would be half solved if the people who undertake domes- 
tic service and accept wages would show reasonable inter- 
est, cleanliness, and honesty; and a million of the race 
might find steady employment at good wages in the South 
within the next six months, and another million in the 
North, if they would only do faithfully what they are 
capable of doing. 

There is little hope of regeneration by that means; 
the difficulty is that capable Negroes do not like domestic 
service and seek to avoid it. The average Southerner 
sighs for the good old liousehold slaves, and harks back to 
the colored mammy in the kitchen and stately butler in 
the drawing-room in slavery times, as evidence that the 
Negroes are going backward. He forgets thai under 
slavery tlie liighest honorable position open to a colored 
woman was to be the owned cook in a wealthy family; 
tliat Booker T. Wasliington and DuBois and Kelly MiMer 
in those days would have been fortunate if raised to thK3 
lofty pinnacle of the trusted butler or general utility man 
on the plantation. Tlie house servants in slavery times 
were chosen for their superior appearance and intelligence, 
and were likely to be mulattoes; tlie children and grand- 
children of such people may now be owners of plantations, 
professional men, professors in colleges, negro bankers, 
and heads of institutions; while the domestic servant 
commonly now comes from the lowest Negroes, is descended 
from field hands, and chosen out of the most incompetent 

126 



THE NEGRO AT WORK 

section of the present race. The problem of domestic serv- 
ice is chiefly one of the village and the city, in which only 
about a seventh of the Negroes live. 

Even many Southerners have very hazy ideas about the 
subdivisions of plantation laborers; and do not distinguish 
between the renters and croppers, who are tenant farmers 
in their way, and the wage hands who are less ambitious 
and not so steady. There is complaint on many planta- 
tions that negro families do not finish their contracts, 
though the main outcry is against the day laborer ; yet on 
many of the large plantations there is little complaint 
that even he does not work steadily, and little trouble in 
securing from him a fair day's work. 

Another disturbance of the easy generalization that the 
Negro will not work is due to the variations from county 
to county and from place to place. Much more depends 
than the outside world realizes on the capacity of a plan- 
tation manager " to handle niggers " ; and the testimony 
of a perfectly straightforward planter who tells you that 
he knows that the Negroes as a race run away from work 
because he has seen it, is no more true of the whole peo- 
ple than the assurance of his near neighbor that he knows 
the blacks are all industrious because they work steadily 
for him. Here we come back to the essential truth that 
it is unsafe to generalize about any race. There are thou- 
sands of good Negroes in the towns and thousands of lazy 
rascals on the plantations; but the great weight of tes- 
timony is that the colored man works tolerably well on the 
land. 

Another of the statements, repeated so often that peo- 
ple believe them without proof, is that the Southern Ne- 
gro has lost his skilled trades. Two Southern writers say : 
" Now, most of the bricklayers are white. The same is 

127 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

true with respect to carpenter work. The trade of the 
machinist is practically in the hands of white men." " They 
have been losing ground as mechanics. Before the war, 
on every plantation there were first-class carpenters, black- 
smiths, wheelwrights, etc. Half the houses in Virginia 
were built by Negro carpenters. Now where are they?" 
Nothing could better illustrate the fact that Southerners 
who reprehend the interference of the North in questions 
which it does not understand, are themselves myopic 
guides. If the negro trades have disappeared, how does 
it come about tliat in Montgomery, Ala., there are prac- 
tically no other laborers of that type? that the bricklayers, 
carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, are all Negroes, and no 
white boys seem to be learning those trades. The census 
of 1890 showed in Alabama about 13,000 colored men who 
had some sort of skilled employment, many of them in 
trades which did not exist in slavery times, such as iron- 
working, steam fitting, and service on railroads. It is 
true that they are shut out of most of the callings in 
which there is authority over others; there are no negro 
motormen or trolley conductors, no negro engineers, 
though plenty of firemen; no negro conductors, though 
negro brakemen are not uncommon, and in Meridian, 
Miss., the trains are called in the white waiting room 
by a buxom negro woman. 

In some Southern cities Whites, very often Northern 
men, have absorbed certain trades supposed to be the pe- 
culiar province of the Negro: barber shops with white 
barbers are found; the magnificent Piedmont Hotel in 
Atlanta has a corps of white servants; wherever the trades 
unions get into the South they are likely to work against 
the Negro; but in some cases he has unions of his own; 
or there are joint unions of Whites and Negroes. Con- 

128 



THE NEGRO AT WORK 

sidering the great opportunity for white men in callings 
where blacks are not admitted it does not seem likely that 
they will ever be excluded from skilled trades, though sub- 
ject to more competition than in the past. 

Another employment for which the African has in 
many ages and countries been found suited is military 
service. Even in slavery times military companies of free 
Negroes were not unknown, and some of them actually 
went to the front for the Confederacy in the first weeks 
of the Civil War. Then came the enlistment of nearly 
200,000 in the blue uniform, and after the war some 
thousands of men remained in negro regiments. A brief 
attempt to educate colored ofiicers in West Point and An- 
napolis was, for whatever reason, not a success; and the 
negro troops are almost wholly under the command of 
white officers. Since Reconstruction times negro militia 
companies have not been encouraged, and in some states 
have been wholly disbanded. The difficulty in Brownsville, 
Texas, in 1907, has tended to prevent negro enlistment 
in the army and navy. In the Spanish War and later 
in the Philippines negro regiments gave a good account 
of themselves. There are a few negro policemen in the 
cities, but in the South they are likely to disappear. The 
white man resents any assertion of authority over him by 
a Negro, and in general considers him unfit to exercise 
control over people of his own race. 

Even in ante-bellum times there were occasional ne- 
gro business and professional men, some of whom had the 
confidence of their white neighbors and made little for- 
tunes. Since the Civil War these avenues have much 
widened. The 16,000 or 17,000 ministers are still to a 
large degree uneducated persons, as indeed is the case in 
many white churches. Negro physicians are numerous, 

129 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

educated partly in Northern institutions, partly in medi- 
cal colleges of their own, partly in schools officered by 
white professors, as, for instance, in Raleigh, N. C. Like 
the lawyers they cannot practice without the certificate 
of state officers not very friendly to them or easy to con- 
vince of their abilities; and the cream of the practice 
among colored people goes to the Whites. In business, 
negro merchants, manufacturers, builders, and bankers 
have become very numerous. Recently a Negro Bankers' 
Convention was held in the South. Most of the trans- 
actions of these men are carried on with their o\vti people, 
though they often find customers and credit with Whites. 
So far, there are few or no large negro capitalists, but 
many promising groups of small capital have been brought 
together; and at the Expositions of Charleston and James- 
town they showed creditable exhibits of their own in- 
dustries. 

Two entirely new professions have opened up since 
the Civil War. The first is that of journalist, and there are 
many negro newspapers, none of which has any national 
circulation, or extended influence. The other is teaching, 
which has opened up a livelihood to thousands of young 
men and women. Some of the negro colleges are wholly 
manned by members of the race, many of them graduates 
of Northern institutions, who seem to make use of the 
same methods and appeal to the same aspirations as the 
faculties of white colleges. 

Though often accused by his white neighbor of at- 
tempts to unite in hostile organizations, the Negroes show 
little disposition to rally around and support leaders of 
their own race. Booker T. Washington, the man of most in- 
fluence among them, has encountered implacable opposi- 
tion, and efforts have even been made by hostile members 

130 



THE NEGEO AT WORK 

of his own race to break up his meetings in Boston. In- 
asmuch as the Negroes are excluded from politics in the 
South, it is hard for any man to get that reputation for 
bringing things about which is necessary in order to at- 
tract a strong following. As DuBois points out " If such 
men are to be effective they must have some power, — they 
must be backed by the best public opinion of these com- 
munities, and able to wield for their objects and aims 
such weapons as the experience of the world has taught are 
indispensable to human progress." 

One of the strong influences is the conferences gathered 
in part at such institutions as Hampton and Tuskegee, 
and Atlanta University, in part called in other places. 
A considerable number of Negroes have the money and 
the inclination to attend these meetings, where they learn 
to know each other and to express their common wants. 



CHAPTER XI 

IS THE NEGRO RISING? 

THAT the Negro is inferior to the Whites among 
whom he lives is a cause of apprehension to the 
whole land; that his labor is in steadiness and ef- 
ficiency much below that of his intelligent white neighbors 
is a drawback to his section. Yet neither deficiencies of 
character nor of industry really settle his place in the 
community. A race may be as high as the Greeks and 
yet go to nothingness ; a race may be as industrious as the 
Chinese, and have little to show for it. The essential 
question with regard to the Negro is simply: Is the race 
in America moving downward or upward? No matter 
if it be low, has it the capacity of rising? 

To answer these questions requires some study both 
of present and past conditions. A very considerable num- 
ber of Southern Whites are sure that physically and mor- 
ally the Negro is both low and declining; and some go 
so far as to assert that every Negro is physically so differ- 
ent from the white man that he ought not to be considered 
a member of the human race. The argument was familiar 
in slavery times, and has been recently set forth by F. L. 
Hoffman in his " Race Traits of the American Negro " ; 
from chest measurements, weight, lifting strength, and 
power of vision, he is convinced that " there are important 
differences in the bodily structure of the two races, dif- 

132 



IS THE NEGEO RISING? 

ferences of far-reaching influence on the duration of life 
and the social and economic efficiency of the colored 
man." Professor Smith, of Louisiana, in his " The Color 
Line, A Brief for the Unborn," goes much farther in an 
argument intended to show that the brain capacity of the 
Negro, the coarseness of his features, the darkness of his 
color, the abnormal length of his arm, his thick cranium, 
woolly hair and early closing of the cranial sutures, prove 
that he may be left out of consideration as a member 
of a civilized community. 

The tendency of scientific investigators during the last 
forty years has been to minimize the distinctions between 
races ; and the argument that the Negro is to be politically 
and socially disregarded because of structural peculiarities, 
though the stock in trade of the proslavery writers two 
generations ago, now seems somewhat forced. To the 
Northern mind there is a kind of unreality in the whole 
argument of physical inferiority; it is like trying to prove 
by anatomy, physiology, and hygiene that the Hungarian 
laborer is always going to be an ignorant and degraded 
element in our population. 

These technical arguments throw very little light upon 
the real African problem, which is not, what does the 
structure of the Negro indicate that he must be, but what 
is he really and what does he perform? If the Negro 
can work all day in the cotton field, save his wages, buy 
land, bring up his children, send them to school, pay 
his debts, and maintain a decent life, no cranial sutures 
or prognathism will prevent his being looked upon as a 
man; and the whole physical argument, much of which 
is intended to affect the public mind against amalgamation, 
cannot do away with the plain fact that the white and the 
black races are so near to each other that some hundreds 

133 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

of thousands of people come of white fathers and negro 
or mulatto motliers. The Negro is entitled to be measured, 
not by brain calipers, nor by two-meter rods, but by what 
he can do in the world. 

What he can do in the world depends upon the inner 
man and not the outer; and here we approach one of the 
most serious problems connected with the race. Has the 
Negro character? Can he conceive a standard and adhere 
to it? Can he fix his mind on a distant good and for 
its sake give up present indulgences ? Can he restrain the 
primal impulses of human nature? 

That the Negroes as a race are impure and unregu- 
lated is the judgment of most white observers whether 
ill-wishers or fair-minded men. Thomas Nelson Page, 
for instance, declares that the immorality of the negro 
race has increased since slavery times. Thomas, himself 
a Negro, asserts that the sexual impulse "constitutes the 
main incitement to the degeneracy of the race, and is 
the chief hindrance to its social uplifting." Kelsey, a 
Northern observer, says : " Many matings are consum- 
mated without any regular marriage ceremony and with 
little reference to legal requirements." On this subject 
as on all otliers the most preposterous exaggerations are 
rife; a plantation manager will tell you that not two in 
a hundred couples on his plantation are married; a stock 
statement, a thousand times repeated, is that there is no 
such thing as a virtuous negro woman. Yet the truth 
is gruesome enough; there are plenty of plantations where 
barely half the families are married ; bastard children are 
very numerous; and this condition applies not only in 
the cities and towns where people are put into new and 
trying environments, but everywhere among the Negroes 
upon the land. It is the most discouraging thing about 

134 



. IS THE NEGRO RISING? 

the race, because it saps the foundation of civilization. 
Nor is it an explanation to say that under slavery family 
ties were disregarded. The race has now had forty years 
of freedom and undisturbed religious training, such as it 
is. Still they ought to show decided improvement in 
morals if the race is capable of living on a high moral 
plane. 

This is a gloomy and delicate subject, but cannot be 
allowed to pass without a few positive illustrations. When 
Kelsey suggested to a Negro that he might go back to the 
plantation and board in a negro family, he replied: 
" Niggers is queer folks, boss. ^Pears to me they don' 
know what they gwine do. Ef I go out and live in a man's 
house like as not I run away wid dat man's wife." A girl 
whose mistress was trying to put before her a higher stand- 
ard of conduct said : " It's no use talking to us colored 
girls like we were white. A colored girl that keeps pure 
ain't liked socially. We just think she has had no 
chance." A negro boy twelve years old has been known 
to reel off two hundred different obscene rhymes and songs. 
Divorce is frequent, particularly the easy form which 
consists of the husband throwing his wife out of doors and 
bringing in another woman. The negro preachers are 
universally believed to be the worst of their kind, and very 
often are. If the things that are regularly told by white 
people and sometimes admitted by colored people are true, 
the majority of the Southern Negroes, rural and urban, 
are in a horribly low state both physically and morally. 

The more credit to those members of the race who are 
pure and upright; who are showing that it is a libel to 
brand as hopelessly corrupt ten million people, including 
probably two million mulattoes; to say nothing of the 
numerous examples of chaste and self-respecting Negroes 

135 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

of both sexes in the Northern states. The most furious 
assailant of negro character will usually tell you of on6 
or two Negroes that he knows to be perfectly straightfor- 
ward; and the writer can bear personal testimony to the 
apparent wholesomeness of family life in negro homes 
that he has chanced to visit. Here, a young mother in her 
scrupulously clean log house hovering over her little chil- 
dren as affectionately as though she and they were white; 
there, gathered around the hearth of a new house with 
good furniture and pretty pictures, a family of seven 
children, neat, clean, attractive, respectful, intelligent, and 
apparently attached to father and mother. Again, a fine 
specimen of the thrifty colored man who boasts that he 
has lived forty-one years with one wife : " I got a good 
wife, she take keer of me." Where such homes are, all 
is not vile. It is a favorite Southern delusion that educa- 
tion and Christian teaching have no effect on the animal 
propensities of Negroes; there are thousands of examples 
to the contrary. 

It would do no good to anybody to minimize the ter- 
rible truth that the Negroes as a race are in personal 
morality far below the Anglo-Saxons as a race, that the 
heaviest dead weight upon them is their own passions ; but 
it would be equally futile to blink at the fact that the 
Whites do not set them in this respect a convincing exam- 
ple. Anglo-Saxons the world over are not unreasonably vir- 
tuous ; and the divorce cases of Pittsburg might not be safe 
reading for impressionable people like the blacks. If the 
negro race is depraved it cannot but have a demoralizing 
effect on the white race, most of whom have colored nurses ; 
and the male half of whom have all their life been exposed 
to a particularly facile temptation. Heaven has somehow 
shielded the white woman of the South from the noxious 

136 



IS THE NEGRO RISING? 

influences of a servile race; in slavery times and now 
there is not a fairer flower that blooms than the white 
Southern girl; although it is a delusion that she is 
never pursued by men of her own race. No visitor, no 
clean Southern man, knows the abysses in both races or 
can fix the proportion in which both need to rise if the 
Southland is to be redeemed from its most fearful danger. 
Great numbers of the Negroes are immoral, and great 
numbers of white men can testify to their immorality, 
for the building up of character is a long and weary process 
in both races. 

So far as the future of the Negro is concerned, the 
real problem is whether he can suppress his bad traits 
and emphasize his higher nature, but that is a question 
with regard to all other races. The blacks are ignorant, 
not only of books, but of the world, of life, of the expe- 
rience of the race. They are untrustworthy, but at the 
same time faithful; as one of their own number says: 
" They'll loaf before your face and work behind your back 
with good-natured honesty. They'll steal a watermelon, 
and hand you back your lost purse intact." 

In any case, it may safely be affirmed that the Negro 
is not retrograding. On the Sea Islands, where it has 
been reported that the Negroes had sunk to savagery, where 
on one small island a white face had not been seen for 
ten years, there is undoubtedly a widespread belief in 
magic, or what a fluent colored preacher, in a discourse 
apparently intended for white ears, referred to as " Hin- 
dooism.'' On such subjects the Negroes are reticent; but 
no evidence of paganism is visible to long-time residents 
on the islands. When it comes to fortune-telling and 
charms, and a fetich that will insure you against having 
your mortgage foreclosed, about the same thing may be 

137 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

found among otherwise intelligent people in any Northern 
city. Degradation is frequent; and marital relations are 
loose on the islands, though no more so than on the plan- 
tations of Mississippi, or among the Negroes of the cities 
of Georgia. The population is in general healthier than 
on the mainland, though much exposed to severe malaria. 
Two or three of the African superstitions do survive; one 
is that you must always keep a door open during the day 
so that you may not shut the bad spirit in with you; but 
at night doors and shutters must be closed to keep the 
spirit out. Another superstition is the "Basket-name," 
which is the plague of the Northern teachers, who are a 
long time in learning that Louisa's basket name is " Chug," 
or that when you call Ezra, " Mantchey " will come. 
Churches of various denominations are kept up, and, to- 
gether with the various lodges, furnish the principal social 
life of the people. To be sure they often have African 
dances at their religious services; but these are very like 
the Shaker dances, which can hardly be called pagan 
worship. 

The error as to the progress of the Negro arises both 
from an unfounded notion of tlie virtues and the civiliza- 
tion of the Negroes under slavery, and an equally un- 
founded idea that the average conditions of the Negro 
to-day are hopeless. The Negro was busier in slavery 
times than now because there was always the whip in the 
background, but there is no reason to suppose that his 
average annual product was as great as that of the present 
freeman. Falsehood, thriftlessness, and immorality are 
the charges which were constantly brought against the 
slaves, both by outsiders and by tlieir own masters. Judged 
by the standards which the white man most readily applies 
to himself — namely, the proportion of educated and pro- 

138 



IS THE NEGRO RISING? 

gressive men and women, the average amount of property, 
the interest in the welfare of the race — there is no reason 
to doubt that the Negi'o is higher up than he was half a 
century ago. 

How far does the desire for uplift extend, and how far 
is it effective? The negro population shows a distinct 
interest in the future of the race. The field hand who has 
the ambition to save and improve, to buy his own land, 
feels that he is benefiting not only himself, but giving 
an object lesson of the power of his race. Some of the 
leaders have personal ends to gain, but they all expect to 
gain them by showing a power to improve the conditions 
of their fellows. Yet even though the Negro may be work- 
ing steadily, he may also be gaining nothing from gen- 
eration to generation; if he gets better wages, he may be 
squandering them; a small part of the race might con- 
ceivably be going forward, while a large part was drop- 
ping back. 

A piece of testimony on the highest phases of negro 
character which is too often forgotten in the South is 
that on the occasion when the race had the best opportu- 
nity to show black-heartedness it gave the world a noble 
example of patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. As that 
great Southerner, Grady, wrote : " History has no parallel 
to the faith kept by the negro in the South during the 
war. Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, 
and yet through these dusky throngs the women and chil- 
dren walked in safety, and the unprotected homes rested in 
peace. Unmarshalled, the black battalions moved patiently 
to the fields in the morning to feed the armies their idle- 
ness would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously 
at the big house to ^ hear the news from marster,' though 
conscious that his victory made their chains enduring. 
10 139 



THE souther:^" south 

Everywiiere humble and kindly. The body guard of the 
helpless. The rougli companion of the little ones. The 
observant friend. The silent sentry in his lowly cabin. 
The slirewd counsellor. And when the dead came home, 
a mourner at tlie open grave. A thousand torches would 
have disbanded every Southern army, but not one was 
lighted." That achievement was a vast advance above the 
savagery of the native African; and why should the 
capacity for improvement stop there? 

Keeping in mind the fact that with all his patience 
the slave in the best days of slavery was still a low and 
vicious type in whom his slavehood strengthened native 
propensities to lying, theft, and lust, it is undeniable that 
the greater part of the race has made great advances ; even 
John Temple Graves, a harmful enemy of the Negro, ad- 
mits that "The leaders of no race in history have ever 
shown greater wisdom, good temper and conservative dis- 
cretion than distinguishes the two or three men who stand 
at the head of the negro race in America to-day.^' Under 
slavery no such success or influence was possible; there 
could be no negro orators, or reformers, or leaders in the 
South. 

An invariable answer to the plea that the character 
of the negro leaders is a proof of the capacity for uplift 
is that they are substantially white men. At the same mo- 
ment the critics deny to those substantially white men the 
privileges of actual white men. But may not " substan- 
tially white men" have an uplifting influence such as 
indubitably white men had in earlier times? Most can- 
did white observers, however hostile to the race, admit 
that somewhere from a tenth to a fourth of all the Ne- 
groes are doing well and moving upward ; and this applies 
to the Negro on the land as well as in cities. In many 

140 



IS THE NEGRO RISING? 

scattered areas in the South, groups of plantation Negroes 
have bought land and are saving money. Here are a few- 
examples taken from the writer's notebook : 

At Calhoun, Ala., may be found nearly a hundred Ne- 
groes who have bought or are buying their own farms, 
and have made $60,000 of savings to do it. A negro 
woman on one of those farms said of her new house: 
" We don't need no rider (overseer) now, dis house is our 
rider. It will send us into the field, it will make us work, 
and it will make us plan. We's got to plan. When Ise 
out in the pit I has to stop to look up at dis house, and 
den Ise so pleased I don't know how I am working." 
Near Nixburg, Ala., is another settlement started by a 
Negro, Rev. John Leonard, soon after the war, which is 
called thereabouts " Niggerdom," because the blacks have 
acquired the best tract of land in the region, have put up 
the best schoolhouse in the county, and as a neighbor said 
of them : " They have got to the place now where they're 
no more service to the Whites. They want to work for 
themselves." At Ivowaliga, Ala., is the Benson settlement, 
where a Negro has bought his former master's plantation, 
largely extended it, has built a dam and mill, owns three 
thousand acres of land with many tenants, and is one of 
the few large planters of that section who combines cattle 
raising with cotton. He gave land and assistance to a good 
school with commodious buildings, carried on entirely by 
Negroes (including Tuskegee graduates) ; is building 
what is probably the best planter's house in the county, 
and has plenty of outside investments. At Mound Bayou, 
Miss., is another purely negro settlement, with a popula- 
tion of about two thousand, among whom not a single 
white man lives. Under the guidance of two brothers 
named Montgomery, they bought their land direct from the 

141 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

railroad company, claim to own 130,000 acres, and have 
paid for considerable parts of it; maintain their own 
stores, carry on a little bank, and elect a negro munici- 
pal government. The results show as much capacity for 
managing their own affairs as the neighboring white 
towns. 

There are two or three settlements of the same kind 
in the South, on a smaller scale, as at Goldsboro, Fla., 
and one in Alabama. Different in type, but a proof of 
prosperity, are the negro settlements on the Sea Islands; 
here is no personal leader like Leonard, or Benson, or 
Montgomery ; but on several of the islands is a large group 
of colored landowners who have been there ever since the 
Civil War, and whose houses are much superior to the 
usual negro cabins. While not progressive, they hold on 
to their land with great tenacity, and are not running 
into debt. 

These specific examples prove beyond question that 
Africans can advance. Every one of the settlements 
above mentioned is planted in an unpromising region, 
among Negroes presumably of a lower type than the 
average. Lowndes County, in which Calhoun is situated, 
is one of the most backward in the South ; the Sea Islands 
have the densest negro population to be found anywhere. 
Similar instances, on a smaller scale may be found in 
every state and almost every county of the South. How- 
ever backward the people, you are everywhere told that 
a few save money, buy land, and try to give their children 
better conditions. Nor is it the mulattoes only who show 
this disposition to get on in the world; the pure Negroes 
sometimes are the most industrious and sensible of their 
race. 

Houses and lands are not the only measure of uplift; 
142 



IS THE NEGEO RISING? 

and the numerous Negroes who, according to the impres- 
sion of white men not likely to exaggerate, are really 
thrifty, might be unable to raise the average of their race ; 
but it seems clear that the Negro is nowhere reverting 
to barbarism ; that a considerable part of the race, certainly 
one fourth to one fifth, is doing about as well as the low- 
est million or two of the Southern Whites ; though perhaps 
a fifth (of whom a great part are to be found in towns 
and cities) are distinctly doing ill; that the Negroes on 
the land, though on the average low, ignorant, and de- 
graded, are working well, making cotton, and helping to 
enrich the South. For, as one of themselves puts it : " The 
native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they 
be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly be 
dealt with." The real negro problem is the question of 
the character and the future of the laborer. 

But deep in the breast of the Average Man 

The passions of ages are swirled. 
And the loves and the hates of the Average Man 

Are old as the heart of the world — 
For the thought of the Race, as we live and we die. 
Is in keeping the Man and the Average high. 

The only real measure of uplift is character, but char- 
acter cannot be reduced to statistical tables. The accu- 
mulation of property, especially by a race nearly pauper- 
ized when it first acquired the right to hold property, can 
be traced and throws much light on the important ques- 
tion whether the Negroes are rising or falling. It is dif- 
ficult to separate out the contribution which the Negro 
makes to the wealth of the South, and to estimate his own 
savings, because the only available census figures on this 

143 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

subject deal with the three classes of owners, renters, and 
croppers of land; and do not, and probably cannot, make 
a separate account of negro wage hands on the planta- 
tions, and workmen and jobbers of every description. As 
nearly as can be judged, more than half the cotton comes 
off plantations tilled by negro laborers, or tenants; and 
for the rest, a notable portion is raised by independent 
negro farmers, chiefly on the hills — some on the lowlands. 
The wage liands and the town Negroes have, in general, 
little to show for their work at the end of the year. They 
receive or are credited with wages, live on them, and 
they are gone. Negroes are extravagant, tempted by ped- 
dlers and instalment-goods men, and fond of spending for 
candy, tobacco, and liquor. There are few savings banks 
in the South, and the failure of tlie Freedman's Bank in 
Reconstruction times was a terrible blow to the long 
process of building up habits of thrift. It seems to be 
the conviction of the best friends of the Negro in the 
South that the great majority of the day laborers have 
made little or no advance in habits of saving during the 
last forty years, although most of them have more to show 
in the way of clothing and furniture than their fathers 
had. 

This is a great misfortune to the race, because, as 
Booker Washington never wearies of pointing out, now is 
the golden time for the Negro to acquire land. After the 
war, good farm land could be bought up at from $1 to 
$5 an acre; and to-day a family with $500 in cash, and 
saving habits, can, in most parts of the South, pick up 
an out-of-the-way corner of land, with a poor house on 
it, and begin the kind of struggle to support the family 
and pay for improvements which has been the practice 
of the Northwest. It is true that good land has now 

144 



IS THE NEGRO RISING? 

become expensive; there are under-drained Delta lands 
which are held at $50 to $100 an acre, and although plant- 
ers grumble at the trouble and loss of making cotton with 
shiftless hands, not one in a hundred wants to break up 
his plantation and sell it out to the Negroes. The suc- 
cessful communities of negro farmers who have acquired 
land during the last ten years have, with half a dozen 
exceptions, been organized by Northern capitalists, or 
philanthropists who have bought estates in order to sell 
them out. The reason for this reluctance of the planter 
is very simple: his business is to raise cotton on a large 
scale; if he sells out even at a good figure, he loses his 
occupation; and the South, as a community, has not yet 
seized the great principle that the prosperity of everybody 
is enhanced by an increase in the productive and purchas- 
ing power of the laborer. 

No figures can be found for the city real estate holdings 
of Negroes, but in 1900 there were 188,000 so-called farms 
owned by Negroes, subject, of course, like white property, 
to mortgages for part of the purchase money, or for debts 
afterward incurred. In addition, 560,000 negro families 
were working plots of land, as croppers and renters, and 
received either a share or the whole of the crop that they 
made. These people altogether were working 23,000,000 
acres, an average of about 30 acres to a family; and pro- 
duced $256,000,000 worth of products. These 750,000 
"farmers" represent something over 3,000,000 individu- 
als, which figures to an annual output of $80 per head; 
and it is difficult to see how that value could possibly be 
produced if the Negroes were not there. The families 
of the day laborers count up to at least 3,000,000 more; 
and their product was probably somewhere near as large 
as that of the renters and croppers, although the share 

145 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

of the planter is rather greater. It would seem reasonable 
to assert that $500,000,000 of the $1,200,000,000 of farni 
products in the South was raised by negro labor; and that 
by their work in the cities and towns they probably add 
another $200,000,000 to the annual product. 

It is not, however, certain that the Negroes have ac- 
cumulated in their own hands so much as the value of one 
year's output. A. H. Stone, a practical planter, says that, 
on his plantation, negro property was irregularly sub- 
divided ; his renters had property accumulated to an aver- 
age of $400 a family, while the share hands did not aver- 
age $50 a family. That is, the greater part of the 
negro property is owned by the smaller part of the 
population. That is not peculiar to Negroes; in New 
York City nearly the whole property is said to be owned 
by 20,000 people; and in Galveston most of the valuable 
real estate is said to be in the hands of, or controlled by, 
a score of individuals. In the cities and towns, many 
prosperous Negroes are rent payers, and own no real estate, 
but there may be 50,000 owners besides the 190,000 farm 
owners. In Kentucky half the Negroes who are working 
land independently own their farms. Even in Mississippi 
the owners and renters together are more than the share 
hands. 

Since no Negro can successfully rent unless he owns 
mules and farm tools, and the renters are consider- 
ably more numerous than the owners, we may add 250,- 
000 more families on the land who have accumulated 
sometliing. That makes 550,000 families, or between a 
third and a fourth of the Southern Negroes, who are get- 
ting ahead. If the 550,000 families averaged $900 each 
of land and personal property they would hold $500,000,- 
000 ; $900 is, liowever, a high figure, and it may be roughly 

U6 



IS THE NEGRO RISING? 

estimated that negro land owners and renters had accumu- 
lated in 1900 not more than $300,000,000 or $400,000,- 
000 worth of property. The rest of the Southern Negroes 
are about 7,000,000 in number; at the low average of $15 
a head of accumulations they would count up nearly $150,- 
000,000 more. A fair estimate of negro wealth in the 
South, therefore, would be something above $500,000,000, 
and constantly rising. 

This estimated proportion is confirmed by investiga- 
tions into taxes paid by Negroes. In 1902 the 2,100,- 
000 Negroes in the four states of Virginia, North 
Carolina, Georgia, and Arkansas were assessed for taxes 
on $54,000,000. At the same proportion throughout the 
South, their assessment would have been about $170,000,- 
000, which by this time has probably increased to over 
$200,000,000; and $200,000,000 is a fortieth of the pres- 
ent total assessment. The sum is great, but the propor- 
tion to the wealth of the South is small. At best it 
can be said that the Negroes, who are a third of the popu- 
lation, own a fortieth of the property in the South; and 
that one fourth of the Negroes own four fifths of all 
the negro property. The taxes do not tell the whole story, 
and there are probably rich Northern cities in which the 
poorest third of the population does not directly pay more 
than a fortieth of the taxes. If a race is to be held up 
as worthless because it is not on the tax books, what will 
become of some of the most lively members of the Boston 
City Council and New York Board of Aldermen? Every- 
body knows that in every community the poorest people 
pay the largest proportionate taxes through their rent, and 
through the increased cost of living which is pushed down 
upon them by landlords and storekeepers. If the colored 
people were all to move out of their tenements and farms 

147 



THE SOUTHERN" SOUTH 

and to go on general strike and earn nothing with which 
to buy their supplies, the taxpayers of record would very 
quickly find out who paid a part of their taxes for them. 
Nevertheless, whatever excuses are made for him, it is 
undeniable that the Negro has no such spirit of acquisi- 
tion, no such willingness to sacrifice present delight for 
future good, as the Northern immigrant, or even the 
Southern Poor White. 



CHAPTER XII 

RACE ASSOCIATION 

IN the preceding chapters the eifort has been made to 
analyze and describe the white race and the negro race, 
each as though it lived by itself, and could work out 
its own destiny without reference to the other. The white 
race is faced with the , necessity of elevating its lower 
fourth; the negro race should be equally absorbed in 
advancing its lower three fourths. In both races there is 
progress and there is hope; if either one were living by 
itself it might be predicted that in a generation or two 
the problems would cease to be specially Southern and 
would come down to those which besiege all civilized com- 
munities. But neither race lives alone, neither can live 
alone. The commercial prosperity of the Whites largely 
depends on negro labor; high standards for the negro 
race depend on white aid and white example; neither 
race is free, neither race is independent. They are the posi- 
tive and negative poles of a dynamo, and terrific is the 
spark that sometimes leaps from one to the other. 

In one sense, the Southern Whites are the South, in- 
asmuch as they have complete control of the state and 
local governments, of the military, of public education, of 
business on a large scale, and of society; but the Negroes 
are one third of the population, furnish much more than 
half the laborers for hire, have schools, property, and 

149 



THE SOUTHEKN SOUTH 

aspirations ; hence whatever term is used, " Southern Prob- 
lem," " Eace Problem," or " :N'egro Problem," it refers to 
the antagonism between those two races. How keen is 
the Southern consciousness of this peculiar condition may 
be learned from some of the Southern critics : 

Thomas Nelson Page'thus states it: "A race with an 
historic and a glorious past, in a high state of civilization, 
stands confronted by a race of their former slaves, in- 
vested with every civil and political right which they them- 
selves possess, and supported by an outside public senti- 
ment, which if not inimical to the dominant race is at least 
unsympathetic. The two races ... are suspicious of 
each other; their interests are in some essential particu- 
lars conflicting, and in others may easily be made so ; . . . 
the former dominant race is unalterably assertive of the 
imperative necessity that it shall govern the inferior race 
and not be governed by it." Less drastic is the statement 
of Judge William H. Thomas : " The white man and the 
negro together make up the citizenship of our Southern 
country, and any effort to deal with either ignoring the 
other will diminish the chances of ultimate success. That 
religion and sentiment, the fixed ideals and prejudices, if 
you please, of the South are substantial facts that cannot 
be ignored and must always be reckoned with." Murphy 
speaks of tlie " problem presented by the undeveloped forces 
of the stronger race. These must largely constitute the de- 
termining factor, even in the prol)lem presented by the 
negro; for the negro question is not primarily a question 
of the negro among negroes, but a question of the negro 
surrounded by another and a stronger people." 

To all these attempts to state the case the Northerner 
is tempted to reply that the South has no monopoly of race 
problems; that he too has prejudices and repulsions and 

150 



EACE ASSOCIATION 

race jealousies resembling those of the South; and that 
since he sees them melting away around him, those of his 
Southern brethren will also disappear of themselves. That 
is all true, yet much less than all the truth. In the South 
ever}^ white man is determined that there shall be two races 
forever. Nobody ever stated the Southern point of view 
on this subject better than the late Henry Grady : " This 
problem is to carry on within her body politic two sepa- 
rate races, equal in civil and political rights, and nearly 
equal in numbers. She must carry these races in peace; 
for discord means ruin. She must carry them separately; 
for assimilation means debasement. She must carry them 
in equal justice ; for to this she is pledged in honor and in 
gratitude. She must carry them even unto the end; for 
in human probability she will never be quit of either." 

" The South " in Grady's mouth really means the white 
South, for it is not in the purpose of any Southern 
man or woman of influence to permit the Negro to take 
part in deciding race issues. Furthermore, to the settle- 
ment of these difficult problems the South along with a 
genuine humanity, a desire to act in all things within 
justice and Christianity, brings habits of mind which have 
been discussed in an earlier chapter, and which make espe- 
cially difficult moderate public statements on the race 
question. As in slavery times the simple assertion that 
there is a race question seems to some people an offensive 
attempt to bring ruin on the South : there is still something 
of the feeling candidly set forth by the old war-time 
Southern school geography : " The Yankees are an intelli- 
gent people upon all subjects except slavery. On that 
question they are mad." 

Especially delicate and hazardous is any investigation 
of the most intimate race relation which in the nature of 

151 



THE SOUTHERN" SOUTH 

things is better understood in the South than in the North. 
The sexual relation between Whites and Negroes is in such 
contradiction to mucli of the indictment against the negro 
race, and is so abhorrent even to that section of the white 
race that practices it, that there is no easy or pleasant 
way of alluding to it. Actual race mixture is proven by 
the presence in the South of two million mulattoes; it is 
no new thing, for it has been going on steadily ever since 
the African appeared in the United States, though there 
are people who insist that there was little or no amalga- 
mation until Northern soldiers came down during the war 
and remained in garrison during Reconstruction. Every 
intelligent traveler in the ante-bellum period, every can- 
did observer, is a witness to the contrary. Since the earli- 
est settlements there have continuously been, and still exist, 
two different forms of illicit relations between the races — 
concubinage and general irregularity. Whence came the 
hundreds of tliousands of mulattoes in slavery days? Of 
course tlie child of a mulatto will be normally light, and 
of the two million mulattoes now in the country, very 
likely three fourths are the children of mulattoes. But 
what are the other five hundred thousand? To that fate- 
ful question a reply can be made only on the testimony 
of Southern Whites now living down there, and not likely 
to paint the picture blacker than it is. Here are some 
striking instances of negro concubinage; and the judg- 
ment of competent men is that hundreds of like incidents 
could be collected : 

Case I. — A white business man in a small city of State 
A has lived twenty years with a mulatto woman. They have 
eight children, two of whom are successful business men, 
one of them a banker. The white man says that the 
woman has always been faithful to him, and though under 

152 



RACE ASSOCIATION 

the laws of the state he cannot marry her, he looks upon 
her as his wife and does what he can for the children. 

Case II.— A judge of State B has recently sentenced 
two different white men for cohabitation, though many 
Whites remonstrated and told him that there was no use 
in singling out for punishment a few cases among so many. 

Case III. — In State C a retiring judge suggests that 
cohabitation be made a hanging offense for the White, as 
the only way of stopping it. 

Case IV. — In State D one of the leading citizens of 
a town is known by all his friends to be living with a black 
mistress. 

As to irregular relations, in one state a judge renowned 
for his uprightness proposes that a blacklist be kept and 
published containing the names of men known by their 
neighbors to visit negro women. A recent governor of 
Georgia says that "Bad white men are destroying the 
homes of Negroes and becoming the fathers of a mon- 
grel people whom nobody will own." A newspaper editor 
says that he knows Negroes of property and character who 
want to move out of the South so as to get their daughters 
away from danger. There is no Southern city in which 
there are not negro places of the worst resort frequented 
by white men. Heads of negro schools report that the 
girls are constantly subject to solicitation by the clerks 
of stores where they go to buy goods. The presumption 
in the mind of an average respectable Southern man when 
he sees a light-colored child is that some white man in 
the neighborhood is responsible. 

Whether the evil is decreasing is a question- on which 
Southerners are divided. The number of white prostitutes 
has much increased since slavery days, when there were 
very few of them; and the general improvement of the 

153 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

community, the spread of religious and secular instruc- 
tion, ought to have an effect. But the real difficulty is 
that, although it is thought disgraceful for a white man 
to live with a colored mistress, it does not seem to de- 
stroy his practice of a profession, or his career as a busi- 
ness man. There seems to be lack of efficient public 
sentiment. 

If these statements of fact are true, and every one of 
them goes back to a responsil)le Soutliern source, there is 
something in the wliite race wliich in kind, if not in degree, 
corresponds to tlie negro immorality which is the most 
serious defect of liis character. It is not an answer to say 
that the cities and even some of the open country in the 
North are honeycombed with sexual corruption. That 
is true, and some Soutlierner might do a service by reveal- 
ing tlie real condition of a part of Northern society. Per- 
haps to live with a colored mistress to the end of one's 
life is, from a moral standpoint, less profligate than for a 
Pittsburg business man of wealth and responsibility to 
drive his good and faithful wife out of the house because 
slie is almost as old as he is, and marry a pretty young 
actress. The mere ceremony of marriage no more oblit- 
erates the offense than would in the minds of the South- 
erner the marriage of tlie white man with his concubine; 
and everybody wlio associates with such a man thereby con- 
dones the offense. 

The point is, however, not only that miscegenation in 
the South is evil, but that it is tlie most glaring contra- 
diction of the supposed infallible principles of race separa- 
tion and social inequality. There are two million deplor- 
able reasons in the South for believing that there is no 
divinely implanted race instinct against miscegenation; 
that wliile a Southern author is writing tliat " tlie idea of 

154 



RACE ASSOCIATION 

the race is far more sacred than that of the family. It is, 
in fact, the most sacred thing on earth/' his neighbors, and 
possibly his acquaintances, by their acts are disproving the 
argument. The North is often accused of putting into the 
heads of Southern Negroes misleading and dangerous no- 
tions of social equality, but what influence can be so potent 
in that direction as the well-founded conviction of negro 
women that they are desired to be the nearest of compan- 
ions to white men ? 

There is, of course, a universal prohibition in the 
South against marriage of the two races, and these stat- 
utes express the wish of the community; they put such 
practices to the ban; they make possible the rare cases of 
prosecution, which commonly break down for lack of tes- 
timony. Nevertheless the law does not persuade the negro 
women that there can be any great moral wrong in what 
so many of the white race practice. The active members 
of the negro race are in general too busy about other 
things to discuss the question of amalgamation which there 
is no prospect of legalizing; but it lies deep in the heart 
of the race that the prohibition of marriage is for the 
restraint of the Whites rather than of the Negroes; that 
it does not make colored families any safer; and that if 
there were no legal prohibition many of these irregular 
unions would become marriages. 

One of the curious by-currents of this discussion is the 
preposterous conviction of many Southern writers that, 
inasmuch as these relations are between white men and 
negro women, there is no " pollution of the Anglo-Saxon 
blood;" thus Thomas Dixon, Jr., insists that the present 
racial mixture " has no social significance . . . the racial 
integrity remains intact. The right to choose one's mate 
is the foundation of racial life and civilization. The 
11 155 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

South must guard with flaming sword every avenue of 
approach to this holy of holies." 

On the otlier hand, and just as powerful, is the abso- 
lute determination of the Whites never to admit the mu- 
lattoes witliin their own circle. The usual legal phrase 
" person of color " includes commonly everybody who has 
as much as an eighth of negro blood, and in two states 
anyone who has a visible trace. But social usage goes far 
beyond this limit, and no person supposed to have the 
slightest admixture of negro blood would be admitted to 
any social function in any Southern city. In 1905 there 
was a dramatic trial in North Carolina brought about by 
the exclusion from a public school of six girls, descendants 
from one Jeffrey Graham, who lived a hundred years 
ago and was suspected of having negro blood. The 
Graham family alleged that they had a Portuguese ances- 
tor, and brought into court a dark-skinned Portuguese to 
show how the mistake might have arisen; and eventually 
the court declared them members of the superior race. 

The reason for the intense Southern feeling on race 
equality is to a large extent the belief that friendly in- 
tercourse with the Xegro on anything but well-understood 
terms of the superior talking to the inferior is likely to 
lead to an amalgamation, which may involve a large part 
of the white race. The evils of the present system are 
manifest. The most reckless and low-minded Whites are 
preying on wliat ought to be one of the best parts of the 
negro race. Thousands of children come into the world 
with an ineffaceable mark of bastardy; the greater part 
of Buch children are absolutely neglected by their fathers ; 
the decent negro men feel furious at the danger to their 
families or the frailness of their sisters. Botli races have 
their own moral blemishes, and it is a double and treble 

156 



EACE ASSOCIATION 

mivsfortune that there should be inter-racial mixtures on 
such degrading terms. 

As for a remedy, nobody seems able to suggest anything 
that has so far worked. A recent writer soberly suggests 
that a way out is to make a pariah of the mulatto, in- 
cluding that part of the mulattoes who are born of mulatto 
or negro parents; they' are to be shut from the schools, 
excluded from all missionary efforts, made a race apart; 
and that action he thinks would be a moral lesson to the 
full-blooded Africans ! Another method is that of the 
anti-miscegenation league of Vicksburg, Miss., which aims 
to make public the names of offenders and to prosecute 
them. A better remedy would be the systematic appli- 
cation of the existing laws of the state, with at least as 
much zeal as is given to the enforcement of the Jim Crow 
laws. In the last resort there is no remedy except such 
an awakening of public sentiment as will drive out of the 
ranks of respectable men and women those who practice 
these vices. Such a sentiment exists in the churches, the 
philanthropic societies, and an army of straightforward 
sensible men and women. The evil is probably somewhat 
abating; but till it is far reduced how can anybody in the 
South argue that education and material improvement of 
the Negro are what most powerfully tends to social equal- 
ity? Just so far as the negro man and the negro woman 
are, by a better station in life, by aroused self-respect 
and race pride, led to protect themselves, so far will this 
evil be diminished. 

The subject cannot be left without taking ground upon 
the underlying issue. All the faults of the Southern men 
who are practical amalgamators add weight to tlie bottom 
contention of the South that a mixture of the races, now 
or in the future, would be calamitous. That belief rests 

157 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

upon the conviction that the negro race, on the average, 
is below tlie white race; that it can never be expected to 
contribute anything like its proportion of the strength of 
the community; and hence to fuse the races means slight 
or no elevation for the Negro, and a great decline for the 
white race. With that belief the writer coincides. The 
union of the two races means a decline in the rate of civil- 
ization; and the fact that so much of it is going on is 
not a reason for legalizing it, but for sternly suppress- 
ing it. If amalgamation is dangerous and would pull 
down the standard of that higher part of the commu- 
nity which must always be dominant, then such steps 
must be taken in all justice, in all humanity, with all 
effort to raise both races, as are necessary to prevent 
amalgamation. 

While thus in one way fully recognized as a human 
being and of like blood with the Whites, upon the other 
side the Negro is set aside by a race prejudice which in 
many respects is fiercer and more unyielding than in the 
days of slavery. One of the few compensations for slavery 
was tlie not infrequent personal friendship between the 
master and the slave; they were sometimes nursed at the 
same tawny breast; and played together as children; 
Jonas Field, of Lady's Island, to this day remembers with 
pride how after the war, when he became free, his old 
master, whose body servant he had been, took him to his 
house, presented him to his daughters, and bade them al- 
ways remember that Jonas Field had been one of the 
family, and was to be treated with the respect of a father. 
The influence of the white mistress on those few slaves 
wiio were near to her is one of the brightest things in 
slavery. She visited the negro cabins, counseled the 
mothers, cared for the sick, and by life and conversation 

158 



EACE ASSOCIATION 

tried to build up their character. It is almost the universal 
testimony that such relations are disappearing ; rare is the 
white foot that steps within the Negro's cabin. John 
Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, says : " More and more 
every year the negro's life — moral, intellectual, and indus- 
trial — is isolated from the white man's life, and there- 
fore from his influence. There was a kindlier and more 
confidential relationship . . . when I was a boy than 
between my children and the present generation of 
negroes." 

It is a singular fact that the feeling of race antago- 
nism has sprung up comparatively recently; to this day 
there are remnants of the old clan idea of the great plan- 
tations. Thousands of Negroes choose some White as a 
friend and sponsor, and in case of difficulty ask him for 
advice, for a voucher of character, or for money, and are 
seldom disappointed. The lower stratum of the Whites, 
which is thrown into close juxtaposition with Negroes, 
finds no difficulty in a kind of rude companionship, pro- 
vided it is not too much noticed. The sentimental and 
sometimes artificial love for the old colored "mammy" 
is a disappearing bond between the races, for though the 
white children are cared for almost everywhere by negro 
girls, there seems little affection between the nurse and her 
charge. 

Some Southern authorities assert that race hatred was 
fomented toward the end of Eeconstruction. Says " Nicho- 
las Worth " : " Men whose faithful servants were negroes, 
negroes who had shined their shoes in the morning and 
cooked their breakfasts and dressed their children and 
groomed their horses and driven them to their offices, 
negroes who were the faithful servants and constant 
attendants on their families, — such men spent the day de- 

159 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

daring the imminent danger of negro 'equality' and 
* domination/ " The same genial writer goes on to describe 
the gloom at the supposed flood of African despotism ; they 
said : " Our liberties were in peril ; our very blood would 
be polluted ; dark night would close over us,— us, degener- 
ate sons of glorious sires,— if we did not rise in righteous 
might and stem the barbaric flood." Though in all the 
states the Negroes were swept out of political power by 
1876, to this day they are popularly supposed to be plan- 
ning some kind of domination over the Whites. This 
made-up race issue is not yet extinct. Nobody knows the 
inner spirit of a certain section of the South better than 
Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia, who has recently said: 
" The politicians keep the negro question alive in the South 
to perpetuate their hold on public office. The negro ques- 
tion is the joy of their lives. It is their very existence. 
They fatten on it. With one shout of ' nigger ! ' they can 
run the native Democrats into their holes at any hour of 
the day." 

How does this feeling strike the Negro ? Let an intel- 
ligent man, Johnson, in liis " Light Ahead for the Negro," 
speak for himself. He complains that the newspapers use 
inflammatory headlines and urge lynchings — " a whole- 
sale assassination of Negro character " ; that it is made a 
social crime to employ Negroes as clerks in a white store; 
that the cultured Southern people spread abroad the im- 
putation tliat the Negro as a race is worthless; that the 
news agents are prejudiced against the Negro and give 
misleading accounts of difficulties with the Whites; that 
people thonglit to be friendly are hounded out of their 
positions; that there is a desire to expatriate the negroes 
from the country of their fathers. Kelly Miller, a pro- 
fessor in Howard University, Washington, objects to using 

160 



RACE ASSOCIATION 

physical dissimilarity as a mark of inferiority, and thinks 
"that the feeling against the negro is of the nature of 
inspirited animosity rather than natural antipathy " ; 
and that "the dominant South is determined to foster 
artificial hatred between the races." 

Race prejudice has always existed since the races have 
lived together; but, whether because taught to the boys 
of the Reconstruction epoch, or whether because the Ne- 
groes have made slower progress than was hoped, it is 
sharper now than in the whole history of the question. 
Is it founded on an innate race repulsion? Does the 
white man necessarily fear and dislike the Negro? The 
white child does not, nor the lowest stratum of Whites, 
who are nearest the Negro intellectually and morally. 
John Sharp Williams says : "If I were to call our 
race feeling anything etymologically, I would call it a 
* post-judice ^ and not a * pre-judice.' I notice that no- 
body has our race feeling or any race feeling indeed 
until after knowledge. It is a conviction born of ex- 
perience." 

Right here the champions of the Negro discern a joint 
in the armor ; thus, DuBois : " Men call the shadow preju- 
dice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defense of 
culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, 
purity against crime, the ' higher ^ against the ' lower ' 
races. To which the Negro cries Amen ! and swears that 
^to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just 
homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and prog- 
ress, he humbly bows down and meekly does obeisance." 
Is not this the crux of the whole matter ? Is it prejudice 
against a low race, or a black race ? To say that the white 
Southerner looks down upon and despises every black 
Southerner would not be fair, for there is still much per- 

161 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

sonal liking between members of the two races, and the 
South is right in claiming that it has a warmer feeling 
for individual Negroes than Northern people. Said a 
Southern judge once : " If my old black mammy comes into 
tlie house, she hugs and kisses my little girl. But if she 
should sit down in the parlor, I should have to knock her 
down." That is, he liked the mammy, but the nigger must 
be taught to keep her place. 

The phrase commonly used to describe this feeling is, 
" The danger of social equality." Here is one of the mys- 
teries of the subject which the Northern mind cannot 
penetrate. Southern society, so proud, so exclusive, so 
efficient in protecting itself from the undesired, is in ter- 
ror lest it should be found admitting the fearful curse of 
social equality; and there are plenty of Southern writers 
wlio insist that the Negro shall be deprived of the use of 
public conveniences, of education, of a livelihood, lest he, 
the weak, the despised, force social equality upon the 
white race. What is social equality if not a mutual 
feeling in a community that each member is welcome to 
the social intercourse of the other? How is the Negro 
to attain social equality so long as the white man refuses 
to invite him or to be invited with him? It sounds like 
a joke ! 

The point of view of the South was revealed in 1903 
when President Roosevelt invited Booker Washington to 
his table. The South rang from end to end with invec- 
tive and alarm; the governor of a Southern state publicly 
insulted the President and his family ; a boy in Washington 
wrote a scurrilous denunciation on the school blackboard; 
the Charleston News and Courier rolled the incident un- 
der its tongue like a sweet morsel; a Georgia judge said: 
"The invitation is a blow aimed not only at the South, 

162 



EACE ASSOCIATION 

but at the whole white race, and should be resented, and 
the President should be regarded and treated on the same 
plane with negroes," and from that day to this the in- 
vitation has been received as an affront and an injury 
to the Whites in the South. We are told of the terrible 
consequences; how a black boy refused any longer to call 
the sixteen-year-old son of his employer "Mister"; how 
the Negro from that time on has felt himself a person of 
consequence. It does not appear that the President's 
example was followed by any Southern governor; or 
that any Negro invited himself to dinner with a white 
person. To the Northern mind the incident was simply 
a recognition, by the acknowledged leader of all Amer- 
icans, of the acknowledged leader of black Americans. 
The Southern mind somehow cannot distinguish be- 
tween sitting at the same table with a man and mak- 
ing him your children's guardian. The whole argument 
comes down to the level of the phrase used so constantly 
when the question of setting the slaves free was before 
the country : " Do you want your daughter to marry a 
nigger ? " 

What the phrase " social equality " really means is that 
if anything is done to raise the negro race it will demand 
to be raised all the way. But demand is a long way short 
of reality. Northerners have their social prejudices and 
preferences; yet they are not afraid that an Arab or a 
Syrian immigrant is going to burst their doors and com- 
pel them at the muzzle of the rifle to like him, invite him, 
make him their intimate; nobody can establish social 
equality by law or public sentiment. Everybody should 
sympathize with the desire of the South to keep unim- 
paired the standards of civilization; but the friendliest 
Northerner cannot understand why a Southern business 

163 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

man feels such a danger that he writes of social equal- 
ity : " Right or wrong, the Southern people will never 
tolerate it, and will go through the horrors of another 
reconstruction before they will permit it to be. Before 
they will submit to it, they will kill every negro in the 
Southern states." 

This ceaseless dwelling on a danger which no thought- 
ful man thinks impending leads to attacks of popular 
hysteria in the South. A few months ago in the town of 
Madison, Ga., it was reported : " Last night great excite- 
ment prevailed in Madison caused by the appearance on 
the electric-light poles in the city of a yellow flag about two 
feet long, with the word ^ Surrender ' printed in large let- 
ters in the center of it. Women became hysterical and 
thought it was the sign of a negro uprising. Extra police 
was installed and it was thought of calling out the mili- 
tary company. At the height of the excitement, it was 
learned that the signs had been posted as an advertisement 
by a firm here. Cases have been made against the members 
of the firm." 

The real point with regard to social equality is not 
that the Negro is inferior, but that his inferiority must be 
made evident at every turn. You may ride beside a negro 
driver on the front seat of a carriage, because any passerby 
sees that he is doing your bidding; but you must not sit 
on the back seat with a Negro who might be a fellow- 
passenger; you may stop at a Negro's house, if there is 
absolutely no other place to stay, sit at his table, eat of his 
food, but he must stand while you sit ; else, as one of the 
richest Negroes in the South said, " the neighbors would 
burn our house over our heads." The whole South is full 
of evidence, not so much that the Whites think the Negroes 
inferior, as that they think it necessary to fix upon him 

164 



RACE ASSOCIATION 

some public evidence of inferiority, lest mistakes be made. 
It was against such confusion of the character and the 
color that Governor Andrew protested when he said : '' I 
have never despised a man because he was poor, or because 
he was ignorant, or because he was black." 



CHAPTER XIII 

RACE SEPARATION 

STRONG and passionate dislike and apprehension 
such as is set forth in the last chapter is certain to 
show itself in custom and law set up by that portion 
of the community which has the power of legislation. The 
commonest measures of this kind are discriminations be- 
tween Whites and ^Tegroes, especially in the use of public 
conveniences. In some cases the white people shut out Ne- 
groes altogether. There are perhaps half a dozen towns 
in the South in which none but Negroes live; there are 
scores in which the Negroes are not allowed to settle or 
stay. Two counties in North Carolina (Mitchell and 
Watauga) undertake to exclude Negroes; and people who 
attempt to go through there with a black driver are con- 
fronted by such signs as " Nigger, keep out of this coun- 
ty ! " If tliat is not sufficient, a native comes swinging 
across the fields and remarks : " I don't want to have any 
trouble, and I don't suppose it makes any difference to 
you, but if that nigger goes two miles farther, he'll be 
shot. We don't allow any niggers in this county." Such 
exclusions are not unknown in other states. In the town 
of Syracuse, Ohio, for generations no Negro has ever been 
allowed to stay overnight; and the founder of a little 
city in Oklahoma lieard his buildings blown up at night 
because he had ventured to domicile colored servants there. 

166 



EACE SEPARATION^ 

In the two Northern settlements of Fitzgerald, Ga., and 
Cullman, Ala., the attempt was made to keep Negroes out 
altogether. 

In addition to these artificial separations, there is a 
redistribution of the population going on all the while. 
Few of the owners of good plantations any longer live on 
them, and the outlying Whites move into town, or into 
counties where Negroes are fewer. The places thus vacated 
are taken up through rent or purchase by colored people; 
so that we have the striking phenomenon that black coun- 
ties are getting blacker and white counties whiter. Thus 
in Pulaski County, Ga., in thirty years the Negroes 
doubled and the Whites increased only about twenty per 
cent. The same thing is true inside the cities and towns; 
most of them have well-marked negro quarters, near or 
alongside which none but the lowest Whites like to live. 
In Riclunond, on one of the main streets, it is tacitly 
understood that the Negroes take the north sidewalk and 
the Whites the south sidewalk. Probably no place is now 
quite so strict in the matter as Morristown, Tenn., was 
twenty-five years ago, when white women first came to 
teach the Negroes; they were literally thrown off the side- 
walks into the gutter because that was the only place where 
" niggers or nigger-lovers " were allowed to walk. 

The principle of race separation extends from civil into 
religious matters. Before the Civil War Negroes were 
often acceptable and honored members of white churches, 
and there are still some cases where old members continue 
this relation, but they could now hardly sit in the same 
pews. There are also difficulties in attempts to unite 
separate black and white churches into one general de- 
nomination. The Protestant Episcopal Church is much 
perplexed over a proposition for separate negro bishops, 

167 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

inferior to the regular bishops. However, not a twentieth 
of the Xegroes to-day are members of churches which are 
in organic relation to white churches; they have their own 
presbyteries, and conferences, and synods; set their own 
doctrines and moral standards, and (if the white man is 
right in thinking the race inferior) they will necessarily 
develop an inferior Christianity. 

The discriminations so far mentioned have to do with 
unwritten practices; with customs which differ from com- 
munity to community; there is another long series upon 
the statute books. In 1865, in the so-called Vagrant Laws, 
special provision was made for the relations of colored 
people ; four states allowed colored children to be " ap- 
prenticed," which practically meant a mild slavery; in 
South Carolina " servants," as the Negroes were called in 
the statute, were forbidden to leave their master's place 
without consent; Mississippi forbade people to rent land 
to Negroes outside the towns; South Carolina established 
a special court for the trial of negro offenses; several 
states forbade blacks to practice any trade or business 
witliout a license. These laws, which competent South- 
erners now think to have been a serious mistake, seemed 
to Congress evidence of a purpose to restore a milder form 
of slavery, and they were swept away by the Reconstruc- 
tion governments. Nevertheless, in all the Southern states, 
constitutions or statutes forbid the intermarriage of 
Whites and Negroes; and either during Reconstruction or 
since, all the Soutliern states have* provided for separate 
public schools for Negroes; and several states prohibit the 
education of Wliites and blacks in the same private school. 

Tlie most striking discrimination is the separate accom- 
modations on railroads and steamboats, which has entirely 
grown up since the Civil War. In slavery times few 

168 



RACE SEPARATION 

Negroes traveled except as the obvious servants of white 
people; but in 1865 legislation began for separate cars 
or compartments, and of the former slaveholding states, 
only two, Missouri and Delaware, are now without laws on 
that subject. The term "Jim Crow" commonly applied 
to these laws goes back to an old negro song and dance, 
and was first used in Massachusetts, where, in 1841, the 
races were thus separated. The Civil Rights Act of Con- 
gress of 1875 forbade such distinctions, but was held un- 
constitutional by the Supreme Court in 1883. Several 
state and federal cases have given opportunity for the 
courts to decide that if there is a division between the 
two races, the accommodations must be equal. Hence, 
most Southern trains have a separate Jim Crow car, with 
a smoking compartment. The Pullman Car Company, 
perhaps because its business is chiefly interstate, has hesi- 
tated to make distinctions, and commonly will sell a berth 
to anybody who will show a railroad ticket good on the ap- 
propriate train ; but in some states there are now demands 
for separate colored Pullmans, or for colored compart- 
ments, or for excluding Negroes altogether. But nobody 
who knows the Pullman Car Company will for a moment 
expect that it will do anything because patrons desire it. 
The discrimination in many states extends to the stations. 
For instance, in the beautiful new Spanish Mission build- 
ing at Mobile, there are separate waiting rooms, separate 
ticket windows, and two exits — one for Whites and one for 
colored people. In Greensboro, N. C, the waiting room, 
a large and lofty hall, is simply bisected by a brass railing. 
Similar laws apply to steamboats, though here it is not 
so easy to shut off part of the passengers from the gen- 
eral facilities of the boat. Even in the Boston steamers 
running to Southern ports there are separate dining 

169 



THE SOUTHER]^ SOUTH 

rooms, toilet rooms and smoking rooms for colored pas- 
sengers. Eight Southern states separate street-car pasr 
sengers; sometimes they have a separate compartment for 
Negroes — more often, a little movable sign is shifted up 
and down the car to divide the races. Elsewhere, Whites 
sit at one end and Negroes at the other, and fill up till 
they meet. In most of these laws there is an exception, 
allowing colored nurses with white children and colored 
attendants of feeble or sick people to enter the white car; 
and it has been thought necessary to provide that railroad 
employees, white or black, may circulate through the train. 

In restaurants and hotels the distinction is still 
sharper, for except those which are kept only for the accom- 
modations of Negroes, there is no provision for tables for 
colored people in any form outside of the railroad eating 
houses. It is hence practically impossible for any colored 
person to get accommodation in a Southern hotel. 

These discriminations on travel have never been de- 
sired by the railroad companies, inasmuch as they involve 
trouble and expense, and are a check on the Negro's love 
for riding on trains and boats, which is an important 
factor in the passenger receipts. It is everywhere disliked 
by the Negroes, both because they do not, in fact, have 
accommodations as good as those of the Whites, and because 
it is intended to be a mark of their inferiority. The low- 
class white man who, in 1902, acted as ticket agent, bag- 
gage man and division superintendent and conductor on 
the three-mile branch road connecting Tuskegee with the 
main line remarked affably : " Been to see the nigger 
school, I suppose? That's all right, Booker Washington's 
all right. Oh, yes, he's a good man, he often rides on 
this train. Not in this part of the car, you know, but over 
there in the Jim Crow. Oh, yes, I often set down and talk 

170 



EACE SEPARATION 

to Booker Washington. Not on the same seat of course. 
Jest near by." 

Besides these shackles of custom or of law, the Negro 
is in general excluded in the South from every position 
which might be construed to give him authority over white 
people. The civil service of the federal government is 
on a different footing; ever since war times there have 
always been some negro federal officials, collectors of in- 
ternal revenue, collectors of ports, postmasters, and the 
like; but there is a determined effort in the South to get 
rid of them. At Lake City, S. C, in 1898, part of the 
family of Baker, the negro postmaster, was massacred 
as a hint that his presence was not desired. The people 
of Indianola, Miss., in 1903, practically served notice on 
a colored postmistress that she could not be allowed to 
officiate any longer; whereupon President Roosevelt di- 
rected the closing of the Indianola office. When in 1902 
Dr. Crum was appointed collector of Charleston, there was 
an uproar in South Carolina and throughout the South. 
That episode involved some painful and some comical 
things; for instance, a white lady who bears one of the 
most honored names in American history, and who sorely 
needed the employment, was practically compelled by pub- 
lic sentiment to resign a clerkship in the customhouse 
when Dr. Crum came in; and the people who protested 
against his appointment, on the ground that he was unfit, 
had previously helped to select him as a commissioner in 
the Charleston Exposition. 

In all these controversies the issue was double; first, 
that the white people thought it an indignity to transact 
any public business with a Negro representing the United 
States ; and second, that it would somehow bring about race 
equality to admit that a Negro was competent to hold any 
12 171 



THE SOUTHEEN^ SOUTH 

important office. The President was furiously censured 
because he did not take into account the preferences of the ^ 
Southern people, by which, of course, was meant the 
Southern white people; that in South Carolina there are 
more African citizens than Caucasian seemed to them quite 
beside the question. 

For minor offices the lines are not so strictly drawn; 
there are a few colored policemen in Charleston, and per- 
haps other Southern cities; Negro towns like Mound 
Bayou, Miss., have their own set of officials; and there 
are some small county offices which a few Negroes are al- 
lowed to hold. Nearly two thousand are employed in some 
capacity in the federal departments at Washington; about 
two thousand more under the District government; and 
a thousand more elsewhere, mostly in the South. These 
are chiefly in the postal service; there are some negro 
letter carriers in all the Southern cities, and in Mobile 
there are no others. They get these appointments, and 
likewise places as railway mail clerks on competitive ex- 
amination — an especially hard twist to the doctrine of 
race equality; for what is the world coming to if a nigger 
gets more marks on an examination than a white man? 
For the feeling that the Negro in authority is overbearing 
and presumptuous there is some ground, but the attitude 
of the South is substantially expressed in the common 
phrase, " This is a white man's government," and is closely 
allied with the bogy of African domination, which is 
trotted out from time to time to arouse the jaded energies 
of race prejudice. 

One of the most unaccountable things in this whole con- 
troversy is the evident apprehension of a large section in 
the South that unless something immediate and positive 
is done, the Negro will get control of some of the Southern 

172 



RACE SEPARATION 

states, notwithstanding such protests as the following: 
"And even where they represent a majority, — where do 
they rule ? or where have they ruled for these twenty years ? 
The South, with all its millions of negroes, has to-day not 
a single negro congressman, not a negro governor or 
senator. A few obscure justices of the peace, a few negro 
mayors in small villages of negro people, and — if we omit 
the few federal appointees — we have written the total of 
all the negro officials in our Southern States. Every 
possibility of negro domination vanishes to a more shad- 
owy and more distant point with every year." As will 
be shown a little later, the Negro's vote is no longer a 
factor in most of the Southern states, and he shows no 
disposition to take over the responsibility for Southern 
government. The cry of negro domination has been more 
unfortunate for the Whites than for the blacks because 
it has thrown the Southern states out of their adjustment 
in national parties; in the state election of 1908 for Gov- 
ernor of Georgia, the issue was between Clark Howells, 
who was much against the Negro, and the successful candi- 
date, Hoke Smith, who is mighty against the Negro; but 
neither Howells nor Smith brought out of the controversy 
any reputation that dazzled the Democratic Convention 
of 1908. 

No party founded on negro votes or organized to pro- 
tect negro rights any longer exists in the South. In 
Alabama there are still " black-and-tan Republicans " — 
that is, an organization of Negroes and Whites, and one 
of the most rabid Negro haters in the South is a dignitary 
in that organization and helped to choose delegates for 
the Republican national convention of 1908. Throughout 
the South there are also what are called the " Lily white Re- 
publicans" — that is, people who are trying to build up their 

173 



THE SOUTHERX SOUTH 

party by disclaiming any partnership with the Negro or 
special interest in his welfare. Neither of these factions 
makes head against the overpowering " White Man's 
party/' which is also the Democratic party; hence every 
state in the Lower South can be depended upon to vote 
for any candidate propounded by the national Democratic 
convention; hence the section has little influence in the 
selection of a candidate, who yet would not have a ghost 
of a chance without their votes. The net result of the 
scare cry of negro domination is that the Whites are in 
some states dominated by the loudest and most violent sec- 
tion of their own race. 

Behind this whole question of politics and of office 
holding stands the more serious question whether a race 
which, whatever its average character, contains at least 
two million intelligent and progressive individuals, shall 
be wholly shut out from public emplo}Tnent. It is on this 
question that President Roosevelt made his famous decla- 
ration : " I cannot consent to take the position that the 
door of hope — the door of opportunity — is to be shut upon 
any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds 
of race or color. ... It is a good thing from every 
standpoint to let the colored man know that if he shows in 
marked degree the qualities of good citizenship — the quali- 
ties which in a white man we feel are entitled to reward — 
then he will not be cut off from all hope of similar reward." 

The discrimination between the Negro and the White 
has nowhere been so bitterly contested as with regard 
to suffrage, inasmuch as the right of the Negro to vote 
on equal terms with the white man is distinctly set forth 
in the Fifteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, 
and as during Reconstruction the Negro had full suffrage 
in all the Southern states. Without going into the history 

174 



RACE SEPARATION 

of the negro vote, it may be worth while to notice that 
at the time of the Revolution, Negi'oes who had the prop- 
erty qualification could vote in all the thirteen colonies 
except two; that they never lost that franchise in Massa- 
chusetts and some other Northern communities, and that 
as late as 1835 about a thousand of them had the ballot 
in North Carolina. Then in Reconstruction times the 
suffrage was given to all the Negroes iji the country; a 
process of which one of the most bitter enemies of the race 
to-day says : " To give the negro the right of suffrage and 
place him on terms of absolute equality with the white 
man, was the capital crime of the ages against the white 
man's civilization." In reality the North bestowed the 
suffrage on the Negro because its own experience seemed 
to have proved that the ballot was an instrument of civ- 
ilization — for all the foreign immigrants had grown up 
to it. 

Southerners are never weary of describing the enormi- 
ties of the governments based on negro suffrage ; as a mat- 
ter of fact, however, nobody North or South knows what 
would have been the result of negro suffrage, for in no 
state longer than eight years, and in some states only 
about three years, did they actually cast votes that de- 
termined the choice of state officers, or any considerable 
number of local officers. Their habit of voting for "the 
regular candidate," without regard to his fitness or charac- 
ter, was not peculiar to the race or to the section. Disfran- 
chisement began with the Ku Klux in 1870, and in most 
states the larger part of the Negroes at once lost their 
ballots because driven away from the polls by violence 
or terror. The only community in which they were 
disfranchised by statute, together with the Whites, was 
the District of Columbia. Then came the era of 

175 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

fraud, the use of tissue ballots and falsified electoral 
returns, and confusing systems of ballot boxes; then,^ 
in 1890, began a process of disfranchising them by state 
constitutional amendments which provided qualifications 
especially difficult for Negroes to meet: for instance, spe- 
cial indulgence was given to men who served in the Con- 
federate army, or whose fathers or grandfathers were 
entitled to vote before the war. This movement has al- 
ready involved six states, and is likely to run through every 
former slaveholding state. 

Even the comparatively small number of Negroes who 
can meet the requirements of tax, education, or property 
find trouble in registering, or in voting. In Mississippi, 
where there were nearly 200,000 colored voters, there are 
now 16,000; in Alabama about 5,000 are registered out of 
100,000 men of voting age. Sometimes they are simply 
refused registration, like the highly educated Negro in 
Alabama, who was received by the official with the re- 
mark : " Nigger, get out of here ; this ain't our day for 
registering niggers ! " In Beaufort County, S. C, where, 
under the difficult provisions of the law, there are about 
seven hundred negro voters and about five hundred Whites, 
somehow the white election officials always return a ma- 
jority for their friends; and in the presidential election 
of 1908 the hundred thousand negro men of voting age 
in South Carolina were credited with only twenty-five 
hundred votes for Theodore Eoosevelt. 

It has puzzled the leaders of the conventions to dis- 
franchise the greater part of the Negroes without includ- 
ing " some of our own people," and yet without technically 
infringing upon the Fifteenth Amendment, which pro- 
hibits the withdrawal of the suffrage on account of race, 
color, or previous condition of servitude; but they have 

176 



RACE SEPARATION 

been successful. As a Senator from North Carolina put 
it : " The disfranchising amendment would disfranchise 
ignorant negroes and not disfranchise any white man. No 
white man in North Carolina has been disfranchised as 
a result of this amendment." 

It is impossible not to feel a sympathy with the desire 
of the South to be free from an ignorant and illiterate 
electorate; there is not a Northern state in which, if the 
conditions were the same, the effort would not be made 
to restrict the suffrage; but that is a long way from the 
Southern principle of ousting the bad, low, and illiterate 
Negro, while leaving the illiterate, low, and bad White; 
and then, in the last resort, shutting out also the good, 
educated, and capable Negro. For there is not a state 
in the Lower South where the colored vote would be faith- 
fully counted if it had a balance of power between two 
white parties ; and Senator Tillman's great fear at present 
is that the blacks will make the effort to come up to these 
complicated requirements, and then must be disenfran- 
chised again. Have the Southern people confidence in 
their own race superiority, when for their protection from 
negro domination and from the great evil of amalgama- 
tion they feel it necessary to take such precautions against 
the least dangerous, most enterprising, and best members 
of the negro race? Nevertheless, the practical disenfran- 
chisement of the Negroes has brought about a political 
peace, and there is little to show that the Negroes resent 
their exclusion. 

Whatever the divergences of feeling in the South on the 
negro question, it is safe to say that the Whites are a 
unit on the two premises that amalgamation must be re- 
sisted, and that the Negro must not have political power. 
All these feelings are buttressed against a passionate ob- 

177 



THE SOUTHEKN SOUTH 

jection to race-mixture, which is all the stronger because 
so much of it is going on; it branches out into the with- 
drawal of the suffrage, not because the South is in any 
danger of negro political domination, but because most 
Whites think no member of an inferior race ought to vote ; 
it includes many restrictions on personal relations which 
seem like precautions where there is no danger. 

Upon these main issues Northerners may share some 
of the sentiments of the South, but none of the terrors. 
If the Negro is inferior, it does not need so many acts of 
the legislature to prove it; if amalgamation is going on, 
it is due to the white race, can be checked by the white 
race, and by no one else; if the Negro is unintelligent, 
he will never, under present conditions, get enough votes 
to affect elections; if he does acquire the necessary prop- 
erty and education, he thereby shows that he does not 
share in the inferiority of his race. The South thinks 
about the Negro too much, talks about him too much, 
abuses him too much. In the nature of things there is 
no reason why the superior and the inferior race may not 
live side by side indefinitely. Is the Negro powerful 
enough to force his standards and share his disabilities 
with the superior white man? Is it not as the Chinese 
sage says : " The superior man is correctly firm, and not 
firm merely . . . what the superior man seeks is in him- 
self." 

So far as can be judged, the average frame of mind 
in the South includes much injustice, and unwillingness 
to permit the negro race to develop up to the measure of 
its limitations. Here the experience of the North counts, 
for it has many elements of population which at present 
are inferior to the average. If there is a low Italian quar- 
ter in a city, or a Slav quarter, or a Negro quarter, the 

178 



RACE SEPARATION 

aim of the ISTorthern community is to give those people 
the best chance that they can appropriate. Woe to the 
city which permits permanent centers of crime and degra- 
dation ! By schools, by reformatory legislation, by philan- 
thropic societies, by juvenile courts, by missions, by that 
great blessing, the care of neglected children, they try to 
bring up the standard. This is done for the welfare of 
the community, it is what business men call a dollars and 
cents proposition. If a man or child has three fourths of 
the average abilities, the North tries to bring him to the 
full use of his seventy-five per cent; if he stands at 150 
on the scale of 100, it aims to give him the opportunity 
to use his superior qualities. 

This is just the point of view of the Southern leaders 
who are fighting for justice and common sense toward the 
Negro : men like the late Chancellor Hill, of the University 
of Georgia, like President Alderman, of the University 
of Virginia, like Rev. Edgar Gardner Murphy, of Mont- 
gomery; their gospel is that, notwithstanding his limita- 
tions, the Negro is on the average capable of higher things 
than he is doing, and that the gifted members of the race 
can render still larger services to their own color and to 
the community. That is what Dr. S. C. Mitchell, of Rich- 
mond College, meant when he said : " Friend, go up 
higher ! " a phrase which part of the Southern press has 
unwarrantably seized upon as a declaration of social 
equality. 

Every friend of the South must hope that that en- 
lightened view will permeate the community; but, as a 
matter of fact, a very considerable number of people of 
power in the South, legislators, professional men, jour- 
nalists, ministers, governors, either take the ground that 
the Negro is so hopelessly low that it is a waste of effort 

179 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

to try to raise him ; or that education and uplift will make 
him less useful to the White, and therefore he shall not 
have it ; or that you cannot give to the black man a better 
chance without bringing danger upon the white man. 
Contrary to the experience of mankind, to present upward 
movement in what has been a very low white element in 
the South, and to the considerable progress made by the 
average Negro since slavery days, such people hold that 
intelligence and education do nothing for the actual im- 
provement of the colored race. Since the Negro is low, 
they would keep him low; since they think him danger- 
ous, they wish to leave him dangerous; their policy is to 
make the worst of a bad situation instead of trying to 
improve it. 

No Northern mind can appreciate the point of view 
of some men who certainly have a considerable following 
in the South. Here, for instance, is Thomas Dixon, Jr., 
arguing with all his might that the Negro is barely hu- 
man, but that if he is not checked he will become such an 
economic competitor of the white man that he will have 
to be massacred. He protests against Booker T. Washing- 
ton's attempt to raise the Negro, because he thinks it will 
be successful. Part, at least, of the customary and statu- 
tory discriminations against the Negro which have already 
been described are simply an expression of this supposed 
necessity of keeping the Negro down, lest he should rise 
too far. All such terrors involve the humiliating admis- 
sion that the Negro can rise, and that he will rise if he has 
the opportunity. 



1 



CHAPTER XIV 

CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

SITTING one night in the writing room of a country 
hotel in South Carolina, a young man opposite, with 
a face as smooth as a baby^s and as pretty as a girl's, 
volunteered to tell where he had just been, a discreditable 
tale. It soon developed that his business was the sale of 
goods on instalments, chiefly to Negroes, and that in that 
little town of Florence he had no less than five hun- 
dred and ninety transactions then going on; that his 
profits were about fifty per cent on his sales; that nine- 
teen twentieths of the transactions would be paid up; 
but that sometimes he had a little trouble in making 
collections. 

" For instance, only yesterday," said he, " I went to 
a nigger woman's house where they had bought two skirt 
patterns. When I knocked at the door, a little girl came, 
and she says: ^ Mammy ain't to home,' says she, but I 
walked right in, and there was a bigger girl, who says, 
^ Mamma has gone down street,' but I says, ' I know bet- 
ter than that, you nigger ! ' And I pushed right into 

the kitchen, and there she was behind the door, and I 
walked right up to her, and I says, 'Do you think I'll 

allow you to teach that innocent child to lie, you 

nigger ? I'll show you,' says I ; and I hit her a couple of 
good ones right in the face. She come back at me with 

181 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

a kind of an undercut right under the jaw. I knew it 
wouldn't do any good to hit her on the head, but I landed 
a solid one in the middle of her nose; and I made those 
women go and get those skirts and give them up before I 
left the place." 

Once entered on these agreeable reminiscences, he went 
on in language the tenor of which is fortified by a memo- 
randum made at the time. "But that isn't a circum- 
stance to what happened three weeks ago last Tuesday. 
There's a nigger in this town that bought a cravenette coat 
from us for thirteen dollars and a half. It costs us about 
nine dollars, but he only paid instalments of four and a 
half, and then, for about six months, he dodged me; but 
my brother and I saw him on the street, and I jumped out 
of the buggy before he could run away, and says I, ' I 
want you to pay for that coat.' He had it on. He says, 
' I hain't got any money.' Says it sarcastic-like. Well, 
of course I wouldn't take any lip from a nigger like that, 
and I sailed right in. I hit him between the eyes, and he 
up with a shovel and lambasted me with the fiat of 
it right between the shoulder-blades, but I could have got 
away with him all right if his wife hadn't have come 
up with a piece of board and caught me on the side; my 
brother jumped right out of the buggy, and he hit her 
square and knocked her down, and we had a regular mix- 
up. We got the coat, and when we came away, we left the 
man lying senseless on the ground." " But don't those 
people ever get out warrants against you ? " " Warrants 
against me, I guess not ! I lay in bed five days, and when 
I got up, my brother and I swore out warrants against the 
nigger and his wife. We brought them up in court and 
the judge fined them forty-seven dollars, and he says to 
me, ' All the fault I fmd with you is that you didn't kill 

182 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

the double adjective nigger. He's the worst nigger in 
town ! ' " 

With all allowances for the lies visibly admixed in this 
unpleasant tale, it undoubtedly lifts the cover off a kind 
of thing that goes on every day between the superior and 
the inferior races. On the one side stand the negro cus- 
tomers, shiftless, extravagant, slinking away from their 
debts, yet doubtless afterward puffed with pride to be able 
to boast that they had a knock-down fight with a white 
man and were not shot; the other actor in this drama of 
race hatred could not even claim to be a Poor White; he 
was the son of a traveling man, had some education, was 
successful above the average, and until he began to talk 
about himself might for a few minutes have passed as a 
gentleman ; yet to save a loss of less than five dollars, and 
to assert his superiority of race, he was perfectly willing 
to put himself on the level of the lowest Negro, and to 
engage in fisticuffs with a woman. 

It is not to be supposed that this thoroughgoing black- 
guard is a spokesman for the whole South, or that every 
local court inflicts a heavy penalty upon black people for 
the crime of having been thrashed by a white man. The 
story simply illustrates a feeling toward the Negroes which 
is widespread and potent among a considerable class of 
Whites; and it bears witness also to a disposition to settle 
difficulties between members of the two races by the logic 
of hard fists. It is a lurid example of race antagonism. 

No section of the Union has a monopoly of violence or 
injustice. Men as coarse and brutal as the man encoun- 
tered in South Carolina could probably be found in every 
Northern city. Homicides are no novelty in any state in 
the Union, and it is as serious for a Northern crowd to put 
a man to death because somebody calls him ^' Scab " as 

183 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

for an equall}^ tigerish Southern mob to burn a Negro 
because he has killed a white man. The annals of strikes 
are almost as full of ferocity as the annals of lynching, 
and it would be hard to find anything worse than the mur- 
der, in 1907, of some watchmen in Xew York City who 
were thrown down a building by striking workmen, who 
were allowed by the police to leave the building, and were 
never brought to justice. 

Nevertheless, there is in the North a strong impression 
that crime is on a different footing in the South; that 
assaults, affrays, and homicides are more frequent; that 
the South has a larger crime record than seems reconcilable 
with its numerous churches, its moral standards, and its 
fairly good state and city governments. Light may be 
thrown on the problem of race relations by inquiring 
whether the South is as much shocked by certain kinds 
of crime and violence as the North, whether a criminal is 
as likely to be tried and convicted, whether the superior 
race, by its practice in such matters, is setting before the 
inferior race a high standard of conduct. 

Statistics indicate that in desperate crimes against the 
person, and especially in murder, the South far surpasses 
other civilized countries, and other parts of the United 
States. In London, with a population of 6,500,000, there 
were in a year 24 homicides ; 4 of the criminals committed 
suicide, and the 20 others were brought to justice. In 
New York City, with about two thirds the population of 
London, there were 331 homicides with only 61 indictments 
and 46 convictions. In the state of South Carolina, with 
a population about one third that of New York City, there 
were 222 homicides in a year, and not a single execution 
of a white man. 

Popular phrases and the press in the South habitually 
184 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

put a gloss upon many of these crimes by calling them 
*' duels " ; but a careful study of newspaper cuttings shows 
that the old-fashioned affairs of honor with seconds and 
exactly similar weapons, measured distance, and the word 
to fire, have almost disappeared. Nearly all the affrays 
in which the murdered man is conscious of his danger 
are simply street fights, in which each man lodges in the 
body of the other as many shots as he can before he him- 
self sinks down wounded. It can hardly be considered 
an affair of honor when Mr. John D. Twiggs, of Albany, 
Ga., walks through the streets with a shotgun loaded with 
buckshot, looking for Mr. J. B. Palmer, who has gone home 
to arm himself. 

Even this uneven kind of warfare is less frequent than 
the outright assassination of one white man by another. 
Where was Southern chivalry when Gonzales, the editor 
of the Columbia State, was in 1902 killed in the open 
street before he could draw his pistol, by Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor Tillman of South Carolina, about whom the editor 
had been telling unpleasant truths? Where do you find 
the high-toned Southern gentleman when a man walks up 
to a total stranger, seizes him, and with the remark, " You 
are the man who wanted to fight me last night," plunges 
his knife into the victim's back. The newspapers are full 
of the shooting of men through windows, of their disap- 
pearance on lonely roads, of the terror that walketh by 
night, and the pestilence that waiteth at noonday. 

Then there are the numerous murders of friend by 
friend, on all kinds of frivolous occasions ; a man trespasses 
on another man's land, goes to apologize, and is shot; an- 
other makes a joke which his friend does not appreciate, 
and there is nothing for it but pistols. The feeling that 
a man must assert his dignity at the end of a revolver 

185 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

y 

was revealed in New Orleans in 1908 when Inspector 
Whittaker, head of the police, with five of his men, walked 
into the office of the New Orleans World, which had criti- 
cised his enforcement of the liquor laws, struck the edi- 
tor in the face and several times shot at him. After he 
had taken such pains to vindicate the majesty of the law, 
it seems a hardship that his superiors compelled the In- 
spector to resign. There is hardly a part of the civilized 
world where homicide is so common as in the South, and 
the crime is quite as frequent in the cities as in the back 
country. Pitched battles by white men with policemen 
and with sheriffs are not uncommon; and sometimes three 
or four bodies are picked up after such a fight. 

In many ways this unhappy state of things is a survival 
of frontier practices which once were common in the 
Northwest as well as in the South, but which have nearly 
disappeared there as civilization has advanced; but in the 
South there is a special element of lawlessness through 
the Negroes. One of the few advantages of slavery 
was that every slaveholder . was police officer and judge 
and jury on his own plantation; petty offenses were pun- 
ished by the overseer without further ceremony, serious 
crimes were easily dealt with, and the escape of the crim- 
inal was nearly impossible. 

Freedom, with its opportunity of moving about, with 
its greatly enlarged area of disputes among the blacks, and 
between Whites and Negroes, has combined with the in- 
fluence of the press in popularizing crime, and perhaps 
with an innate African savagery, to make the black crim- 
inal a terrible scourge in the South. To begin with the 
less serious offenses, there is no doubt that the Negro has 
a very imperfect realization of property rights, partly 
because of the training of slavery. The vague feeling that 

186 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

whatever belonged to the plantation was for the enjoyment 
of those who lived on the plantation is delicionsly ex- 
pressed by Paul Dunbar: 

Folks ain't got no right to censuah othah folks about dey 

habits ; 
Him dat giv' de squir'ls de bushtails made de bobtails fu' 

de rabbits. 
Him dat built de gread big mountains hollered out de little 

valleys. 
Him dat made de streets an' driveways wasn't 'shamed to 

make de alleys. 

We is all constructed diff'ent, d' ain't no two of us de same; 
We cain't he'p ouah likes an' dislikes, ef we'se bad we ain't 

to blame. 
If we'se good, we needn't show off, 'case you bet it ain't 

ouah doin' 
We gits into su'ttain channels dat we jes' cain't he'p pu'suin'. 

But we all fits into places dat no othah ones could fill. 
An' we does the things we has to, big er little, good er ill. 
John cain't tek de place o' Henry, Su an' Sally ain't alike; 
Bass ain't nuthin' like a suckah, chub ain't nuthin' like a 
pike. 

When you come to think about it, how it's all planned out, 

it's splendid. 
Nuthin's done er evah happens, 'dout hit's somefin' dat's 

intended ; 
Don't keer whut you does, you has to, an' hit sholy beats 

de dickens, — 
Viney, go put on de kittle, I got one o' mastah's chickens. 

Not so genial is the usual relation of Negro with Negro ; 
both in town and city there is an amount of crude and 
13 187 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

savage violence of which the outside world knows little, 
and in which women freely engage. Jealousy is a fre- 
quent cause of fights and murders; and whisky is so po- 
tent an excitant that many competent observers assert that 
whisky and cocaine are at the bottom of almost all serious 
negro crimes. Practically every negro man carries a re- 
volver and many of them bear knives or razors; hence, 
once engaged in a fracas, nobody knows what will happen. 
A woman describing a trouble in which a man shot her 
brother was chiefly aggrieved because " Two ladies jumped 
on me and one lady bit me." There is constant negro vio- 
lence against the Whites, and they occasionally engage in 
pitched battles with white gangs. 

Here, as in so many other respects, even well-informed 
people run to exaggeration. Thus President Winston, of 
the North Carolina Agricultural College, declares in pub- 
lic that the Negroes are the most criminal element in the 
population, and are more criminal in freedom than in 
slavery (both of which propositions are indisputable) ; that 
" the negro is increasing in criminality with fearful rapid- 
ity"; that "the negroes who can read and write are 
more criminal than the illiterate"; that they are nearly 
three times as criminal in the Northeast as in the South; 
that they are more criminal than the white class, and 
that "more than seven tenths of the negro criminals are 
under thirty years of age." This statement, like almost all 
the discussions of criminal statistics, ignores the important 
point that as communities improve, acts formerly not cov- 
ered by the law become statutory crimes ; and hence that 
the more civilized a state the more likely it is that crim- 
inals will be convicted, and the larger will be the apparent 
proportion of criminals. In Connecticut are enumerated 
68 white juvenile delinquents to 100,000 people, in Georgia 

188 



CEIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

only four, but the Georgia boys are not seventeen times as 
good as their brothers in the Northern state. It further 
overlooks the fact that most criminals of all races are 
under thirty years of age, for crime is the accompaniment of 
youth with white men as with Negroes. 

To say that the Negroes furnish more than their pro- 
portion of criminals is no more than to say that the lowest 
element in the population has the lowest and most criminal 
members. The excessive criminality of the Negroes, which 
is marked in all the states of the Union, is of course a 
mark of their average inferiority, and a measure of the 
difficulty of bringing them up to a high standard ; and the 
proportion is often exaggerated. In South Carolina where 
the Negroes are three fifths of the population they furnish 
only four fifths of the convicts. As for the assertion that 
the educated Negroes are specially criminal, the statement 
is contradicted by the records of the large institutions of 
negro education, and by the experience of thousands of 
people. Education does not necessarily make virtue, but 
it is a safeguard. As a matter of fact, white Southerners 
in general know little of the lives or motives of thousands 
of the immense noncriminal class of Negroes, with whom 
they have no personal relations; but are wide awake to 
the iniquities of the educated men who fall into crime. 

The experience of two centuries shows that the Negroes 
are not drawn to crimes requiring previous organization 
and preparation; no slave insurrection has ever been a 
success within the boundaries of the United States; and 
blacks are rarely found in gangs of bandits. The incen- 
diarism of which there is now so much complaint is prob- 
ably the expression of individual vengeance. The Negroes, 
according to the testimony of those nearest to them, are 
inveterate gamblers, and many affrays result from conse- 

189 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

quent quarrels, so that murders may be most frequent where 
there is the best employment and largest w&ges and great- 
est prosperity among the thrifty. Murder, manslaughter, 
and attempts to kill make up three quarters of the recorded 
crimes of the blacks in the Mississippi Delta. Murders of 
Negroes by Negroes are very common and many of the 
criminals escape altogether. 

Negro crime is much fomented by the low drinking- 
shops in the city and in country, by the lack of home in- 
fluence on growing boys and girls, by the brutalizing of 
young people who are sent to prison with hardened crim- 
inals, and in general, by close contact with the lowest 
element of the white race, which leads to crimes on both 
sides. It is a striking fact that where the Africans are 
most numerous there is the least complaint of crime. The 
so-called race riots are usually rows between a few bad 
Negroes and the officers of the law, or a group of aggrieved 
Whites. Fights with policemen and sheriffs are frequent, 
and desperate men not infrequently barricade themselves 
in houses, and sell their lives as dearly as they can. Quar- 
rels over the settlement of accounts are not uncommon, 
and the Negro who feels himself cheated sometimes takes 
his revenge at the end of a gun. As weapons are ordinarily 
sold without the slightest check, to men of both races and 
of every age, there is never any lack of the means to kill. 

Occasionally a cry is raised that proof has been found 
of the existence of " Before Day Clubs " — that is, of organ- 
izations of Negroes for purposes of violence. The thing is 
possible and difficult to disprove, but a sequence of crimes 
through such an organization seems alien to the Negro's 
habits, and is at least unlikely. The serious charges that 
the blacks habitually protect any negro criminal who comes 
to them will be considered farther on. 

190 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

The negro crime about which Southern newspapers 
print most, Southern writers say most, and which more than 
anything else aggravates race hatred, is violence to white 
women. The crime is a dreadful one, made worse by the 
spreading abroad of details, but it has such a fateful rela- 
tion to the whole Southern problem that something must 
here be said, less on the thing itself than on some of the 
common misunderstandings and misstatements vhict. lus 
ter about it. 

Statistics are unfortunately too available, inasmuch as 
for twenty years the number of such crimes has been nearly 
balanced by the number of lynchings for that offense, 
which have been tabulated from year to year by the Chi- 
cago Tribune, and have been thoroughly analyzed by Pro- 
fessor Cutler in his recent book " Lynch Law." From 1882 
to 1903 these statistics show an average of thirty-two lynch- 
ings per year for violence or attempted violence to white 
women, though of late they have been reduced to under 
twenty. This includes some cases of innocent men, prob- 
ably balanced by assailants who escaped. These figures 
completely dispose of the allegation that the crime is very 
frequent. Contrary to common belief in the North, some 
such cases are tried before regular courts ; and in Missouri 
the Governor in 1908 very properly refused to pardon a 
Negro under a sentence of death for that crime. Adding 
in these cases, and the half dozen which perhaps escaped 
the newspaper reporter, at the utmost there are not over 
fifty authenticated instances of this crime in the whole 
South in a twelvemonth. Among something like 3,000,000 
adult negro males the ratio of the crime to those who might 
commit it is about 1 to 600,000; and out of 6,000,000 
white women, not over fifty become victims, or 1 in 120,- 
000. For this degree of danger to white women ten million 

191 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

human beings are supposed to be sodden with crime and 
actuated by malice, and the whole South from end to end 
is filled with terror. 

The allegation frequently made that these crimes are 
committed by highly educated Negroes, graduates of 
Hampton and Tuskegee, is absolutely without foundation. 
Most of them are by men of the lowest type, some un- 
doubtedly maniacs. Most of these occurrences take place 
where the Whites and Negroes are most closely brought into 
juxtaposition, sometimes where they are both working in 
the fields. Hence they are of rare occurrence where the 
Whites are fewest and the Negroes most numerous. In 
many places in the Black Belt, white people have no fear 
of leaving their families, because sure that their negro 
neighbors would give their lives, if necessary, for the pro- 
tection of the white women. The Northern white teachers, 
who are accused of arousing in the Negro's mind the belief 
that he is the equal of the Whites, have never in a single 
instance been attacked; and in communities where the 
Negroes are literally fifty to one, have not the slightest 
fear of going about alone at any necessary hour of day or 
night. 

These statements are not intended to minimize the 
dreadful effects of a crime which brings such wretchedness 
upon the innocent. The two worst enemies of the white 
woman in the South are " The Black Brute," whom the 
Southern press is never tired of describing in unrepeatable 
terms, and the white buzzard journalist who spreads her 
name and her dreadful story abroad to become the seed of 
another like crime. Where is the Southern chivalry and 
respect for white women when every such crime is sought 
out and flashed abroad, in all the details obtainable, and 
the victim is doomed to a second wrong in the lifelong 

192 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

feeling that she is known and branded throughout the 
land? 

A general and well-grounded complaint is that any fugi- 
tive, no matter what his reason for flight, even though he 
is guilty of rape, is fed and sent on his way by his own 
people, a practice which goes back to slavery days when 
there were many strays whose only offense was a love of 
liberty. " The worst feature," says an observer, " is that 
other negroes help to conceal them and their crimes. They 
seem to have entered into a racial agreement that they 
must help each one of their race to escape the penalties of 
the white man's law by resorting to every artifice of un- 
truthfulness and concealment." Judge Cann, of Georgia, 
charges that " as a race, negroes shelter, conceal and pro- 
tect the criminals of their race; that they produce riots 
by attacking officers of the law while in the discharge of 
their duty ; that they openly show sympathy with the negro 
criminal; that they conspire against the enforcement of 
law; that they have made first a hero, and then a martyr, 
of a legally convicted and executed murderer." 

Like all such general statements, these allegations go too 
far. In the first place, it is not altogether a sentiment of 
race solidarity. Negroes have been known to give similar 
shelter to white vagabonds and criminals. In the second 
place, black criminals are frequently apprehended through 
blacks, and large numbers are brought into court, tried 
and convicted, entirely on negro testimony. Something 
has been done in the way of negro Law and Order Asso- 
ciations, which pledge themselves to give up criminals. 
Still, it is discomposing to know that when a search was 
making for a particularly odious fellow in Monroe, La., 
who had for a year or two made himself the nuisance 
of the neighborhood by looking into windows, his father 

193 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

and brothers, who must have known his practices, un- 
hesitatingly signed such a law-and-order pledge. The^ 
Brownsville incident of 1907 also, with the apparent deter- 
mination of scores of men not to " split " on some ruffians 
and murderers among them, produced a painful feeling 
throughout the country. In few respects could the Negroes 
do so much good for themselves as by helping in the de- 
tection of the crime of their own people. 

If Negroes are violent to Whites and among themselves, 
they follow an example daily and hourly set them by the 
members of the Superior Race. In the first place, the Ne- 
gro listens habitually to rough and humiliating language. 
You get a new view of race relations when a planter in his 
store on Saturday night calls up for you one after another 
three specimen Negroes. " This man Chocolate," he says, 
" is a full-blooded nigger, the real thing." " Chocolate " 
says nothing, shrugs his shoulders, and looks as he feels, 
literally like the devil. The next is introduced as " One 
of your mixed ones — How did that come about, hey ! " 
and the mulatto, who has been the official whipper on the 
plantation, grins at the superior man's joke. The third is 
called up and presented as "The Preacher, very fond of 
the sisters." This is a fair sample of what constantly 
takes place wherever there is a rough, coarse white man 
among Negroes. 

The office of the whipper is usually performed by the 
master himself, if he is one of those numerous employers 
who believe in that method. As one such put it : "I follow 
up a hand and tell him to do what he ought ? If he won't, 
I just get off and whip him." " Suppose he summons you 
before a magistrate?" "I lick him again before the 
magistrate and send him home." Other planters have 
given up whipping and charge a fine against the Negro's 

194 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

account. Of course such fellows would rather be whipped 
than prosecuted, and think that the riders (that is, the 
overseers), if they once take it out of them in a thrashing, 
will harbor no further malice. In some states, as North 
Carolina, whipping is unusual ; in others it is frequent. 

Another race trouble is the driving out of blacks who 
make themselves disliked by the Whites. A Negro passes 
an examination for post office clerk, but is warned that 
if he tries to take the place he will be shot. A colored 
editor, whose paper is much less offensive than any of the 
white journals in his neighborhood in bad language and 
incitement to crime, is thought well treated because he 
leaves the state alive. A Negro who is too conspicuous, 
who builds a house thought to be above his station, who 
drives two horses in his buggy, may be warned to leave 
the place ; and if he refuses to sacrifice his little property, 
may be shot. A black doctor may be warned out of the 
county because there are enough white doctors. The South 
is not the only community where people that are obnoxious 
are hustled out of town, and Southern Wliites sometimes 
receive the same unofficial " ticket of leave " ; but it makes 
bad blood when irresponsible people, often in no way su- 
perior in character to the Negroes whom they assail, up- 
root their neighbors. 

Then comes the long list of homicides of Negroes by 
Whites. Ever since Ku Klux times there have been oc- 
casional instances of " whitecapping " — that is, of bodies of 
disguised men riding through the country, pulling people 
out of their houses and whipping them. Such practices 
are not confined to the South and are condoned sometimes 
in the North. Down on Buzzard's Bay in Massachusetts 
a few years ago a jury absolutely refused to convict the 
perpetrators of a similar outrage on a white man; while 

195 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

in Alabama, in 1898, five Whites were sentenced for twenty- 
years each for killing a Negro in that sort of way. Still 
convictions of white men for killing Negroes are very un- 
usual. Since practically every adult negro man has a gun 
about him, the theory of the White is that if you get into 
a quarrel and tlie Negro makes any movement with his 
hands, you must shoot him forthwith. To this purport is 
the testimony of a Mississippi planter who reproved a hand 
for severely whipping his child; the black replied that it 
was his business and nobody should stop it; the white 
man said he would stop it ; whereupon the Negro drew, but 
was met by a bullet in his forehead; and, explained the 
planter, " A steel bullet will go through a nigger's skull." 
Take another case : An assistant manager on an estate in 
the Delta of Mississippi tried to take a pistol away from 
a new hand and felt himself safe because the man had his 
hands in his pockets; but the Negro fired through the 
pocket, instantly killed the white man, and decamped. It 
afterwards was shown that he had previously killed another 
white man. 

The responsibility is not always on the Negro's side. 
There are many disputes over labor contracts, in which the 
Negro justly believes that the white man has cheated him, 
and his attempt to audit is stopped by a quarrel in which 
the black is killed. Even boys under twelve years of age 
have been known to shoot Negroes over trivial disputes, 
and a young lady in Washington recently shot and killed 
a black boy who was stealing fruit. The Negroes complain 
of harsh treatment by the police. For instance, a good- 
looking, very black young man is glad to get out of 
Savannah and among the white people on the Sea Islands. 
" They like the colored people better ; even if they do get 
drunk and are fierce, they treat them better. In Savannah 

196 



CKIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

the other day I saw a man going back to his vessel, and a 
policeman asked him where he was going. He answered 
up rough like^ — I wouldn't do that, I'd go down on my 
hands and knees to 'em rather than have any trouble with 
em, — and the policeman broke his club over his head, ar- 
rested him, and they sent him to the chain gang. I don't 
want to be arrested ; I never have been arrested in my life." 
That the police are often in the wrong is shown by such 
instances as the recent acquittal of a Negro by direction of 
an Alabama judge; he had shot a policeman who was ar- 
resting him without reason, and the judge who heard the 
case justified him. 

Perhaps, comparing city with city, the North is as dis- 
orderly as the South, but the rural South is a much more 
desperate region than the farming lands of the North, as 
is shown by the statistics of homicide and similar crimes. 
In Florida in 1899, with a population of 528,000, there 
were about 40 murders and 200 assaults with attempt to 
murder. In Alabama in 1895-96 there were about 350 
homicides. In one twelvemonth some years ago there 
were 6 murders in Vermont, 96 in Massachusetts, 461 in 
Alabama, and over 1,000 in Texas. Judge Thomas, of 
Montgomery, has shown that the homicides in the United 
States per million of population are 129 against 10 per 
million in England ; and when the sections are contrasted. 
New England has about 47 per million, against 223 per 
million in the South. 

It is not easy to compare the criminal spirit in the North 
and the South by the records of the courts or the statistics 
of convictions ; acts which are penitentiary offenses in one 
state may be misdemeanors, or no crime at all, in another. 
A very recent tabulation, made from statistics of 1905, 
shows in the Lower South 16,000 prisoners against 13,000 

197 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

in a group of Northwestern states having the same total 
population; and in the whole South, 27,000 prisoners 
against 24,000 in a group aggregating the same number of 
people in the North and West. Of the Southern pris- 
oners, about two thirds are Negroes, the proportion of 
criminals to the total numbers of the African race being 
decidedly less than in the North. The only safe generali- 
zation from those statistics is therefore that the Southern 
courts send more people to jail, white and black, than the 
Northern. Statistics throw little light on the question of 
relative crime. 

A comparison is, however, possible between the ordinary 
course of justice in the South and in the North. The most 
notorious defect in the South is the conduct of murder 
trials, as shown by the evidence of Southern jurists. Says 
one, " Unreasoning and promiscuous danger stalks in any 
community where life is held cheap by even a few, and 
where the laws are enforced by privilege or race. In such 
a community there is no sufficient defense against a mob, 
or even a drunken fool." If one credited all the editorials 
in Southern newspapers, he would believe that " a man who 
kills a man in this community is in much less danger of 
legal punishment than one who steals a suit of clothes " ; 
and experienced law}^ers tell you that they never knew of a 
white man being convicted for homicide. 

These statements are exaggerations, for the records 
of pardons show that a certain number of white men have 
reached the penitentiary for that offense and leave it by 
the side door. The reason for the failure of justice in 
numerous cases is, first of all, the technicalities of the 
courts, which are probably not very different in that par- 
ticular from those of the North; and, secondly, the un- 
willingness of juries to convict. It must be accepted as 

198 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

an axiom that the average plain man in the South feels 
that if A kills B the presumption is that he has some 
good reason. Counsel for such cases habitually appeal to 
the emotions of the jury, and ask what they would have 
done under like circumstances. Even conviction may not 
be uncomforable ; take the case of a young White in 
Florida, who killed a policeman, was sentenced to eighteen 
months' imprisonment, was then hired out as a convict by 
his uncle at fifteen dollars a month, and paraded the streets 
at his pleasure. 

A general impression in the North is that the South- 
ern courts are very severe with colored men; and (if he has 
not already been lynched) it is true that they are likely 
to pass heavy sentence on a Negro who has killed a white 
man, and juries are often merciless; but there are 
many cases where blacks are lightly treated on the ex- 
press ground that they have had less opportunity to know 
what is right and wrong. In Brookhaven, Miss., a very 
rough region, in a year three white men have been heavily 
sentenced for killing Negroes; while many cases could be 
cited where a Negro was acquitted or let off with a light 
penalty for a like offense. 

When it comes to less serious crimes, the Negro enjoys 
a special protection whenever he can call in a respectable 
white man to vouch for him as in general straightforward ; 
the Court is then likely to impose a light sentence. Even 
in serious cases a man is sometimes acquitted or lightly 
treated at the request of his master, so that he may re- 
turn to work. That is what the planter meant who 
boasted : " I never sent a nigger to jail in my life ; and 
I have taken more niggers out of jail than any planter 
in Alabama." That is, he never gave information against 
one of his own hands, but inflicted such small penalties 

199 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

as he saw fit; and he would pay the fine for his men who 
came before the courts, or even secure their pardon, so 
as to get them on his plantation. That principle some- 
times goes terribly deep. In the case of a Negro who 
whipped his child to death, the natural inquiry was, 
"What did they do with him?^' To which the noncha- 
lant answer was, " Oh, nothing, he was a good cotton 
hand." 

The great majority of negro convicts are sentenced for 
petty crimes, stealing, vagrancy, and the like, and for 
rather short terms; but the name for this punishment, 
" the chain gang," points to a system practically unknown 
in the North. There are literal chain gangs, with real 
shackles and balls, working in the streets of cities, white 
and black together; and large bodies of convicts are 
worked in the open, stockaded, and perhaps literally 
chained at night. Right here comes in one of the worst 
features of the Southern convict system. The men on the 
chain gang are perhaps employed on city or county work, 
and if their terms expire too fast, the authorities will run 
out of labor; hence, the Negroes believe, perhaps rightly, 
that judges and juries are convinced of their guilt just in 
proportion to the falling off of the number of men in con- 
finement; and that if necessary, innocent people will be 
arrested for that purpose. That is probably one reason 
why Negroes feel so little shame at having been in prison. 
" Did you know I was in the barracks last night ? " is a 
remark that you may hear at any railroad station in 
Georgia. 

The whole subject is complicated with vagrant laws. 
For instance, in Savannah Negroes not at work, or with- 
out reasonable excuse for idleness, shall be arrested; and 
in Alabama if arrested as a vagrant the burden of proof 

200 



CEIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

is on the black to show that he is at work. It is a mistake 
to suppose that colored tramps are common in the South ; 
but irresponsible men, loitering about a city and sponging 
on the working Negroes, are frequent, and furnish many 
serious criminals. 

On the whole, one would rather not be a negro convict 
in a Southern state, or even a white convict, for many 
state and county prisons are simply left-over examples of 
the worst side of slavery. A Northern expert in such mat- 
ters in Atlanta a few years ago, in a public address, con- 
gratulated the people on the new jail which he had just 
visited. At least it looked like the most improved of mod- 
ern jails, for it had large airy cells provided with running 
water, and the only defect in it was that it was intended 
for the state mules and was far better than any provision 
made there for human prisoners. 

The first trouble with the Southern convict system is 
that it still retains the notion, from which other com- 
munities began to diverge nearly a century ago, that the 
prisoner is the slave of the state, existing only for the 
convenience and profit of those whom he serves. In the 
second place, it has been difficult to find indoor employ- 
ment for the men, and most of them are worked out of 
doors, a life which with proper precautions is undoubtedly 
happier and healthier than that inside. In the third 
place, whipping is still an ordinary penalty, and very fre- 
quently applied. Furthermore, a number of states in the 
Lower South have been in the habit of letting out convicts, 
and that is still done in several states, as Florida, Alabama, 
and Georgia. They used to be rented to cotton growers, 
and a planter could get as few as two convicts or even one, 
over whom he had something approaching the power of life 
and death. This was a virtual chattel slavery, which long 

201 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ago ought to have been disallowed by the Supreme Court of 
the United States, as contrary to the Thirteenth Amend- 
ment. If still retained on a state or county plantation, the 
convicts are in the power of wardens whose interest it is 
to drive the men unmercifully. Governor Vardaman in a 
public message in 1908 thought it necessary to say that 
" Some of the most atrocious and conscienceless crimes that 
have been perpetrated in this State are chargeable to the 
county contractor. I have known the poor convict driven 
to exhaustion or whipped to death to gratify the greed or 
anger of the conscienceless driver or contractor. The tears 
and blood of hundreds of these unfortunate people cry out 
for this reform." 

The Governor suggests that white men suffer under 
this system, and there have been recent cases where va- 
grant Whites were sold on the auction block for a period 
of months. It might perhaps be argued that the South 
is always more stern in its judicial punishments than the 
North, inasmuch as five years on a convict farm in Mis- 
sissippi is worse than being decently hanged in Massachu- 
setts. The modern and humane methods of reform, of 
separating the youthful first-term man from the others, 
of specially treating juvenile crime, are little known in 
the South. When a twelve-year-old black boy is sent 
to the chain gang by a white judge, the community suf- 
fers. With regard to all those penal institutions one might 
share the feelings of the good Northern lady, when told 
that her grandson had been sentenced to the penitentiary 
for ten years : " What did they do that for ? why, he won't 
be contented there three weeks ! " 

This sympathy with the criminal the governors of the 
Southern states appear to feel, as is shown by some as- 
tonishing statistics. When Governor Vardaman went out 

202 



CRIME AND ITS PENALTIES 

of office January 1, 1908, he pardoned 8 white men and 18 
Negroes, most of them convicted of murder or manslaugh- 
ter, and 11 of them life men. A Memphis paper has tabu- 
lated the state pardons for a period of twelve months, 
and if the results are accurate, they show 1 in Wisconsin, 
22 in Massachusetts, 81 in Georgia, 168 in Alabama, and 
over 400 in Arkansas. Just how the Negroes get sufficient 
political influence to secure pardons is one of the serious 
questions in Southern jurisprudence. For these lavish par- 
dons the Whites are wholly responsible, for from them 
spring all the governors and pardoning boards. 

The same responsibility rests on the Whites for the 
inefficiency of criminal justice and for the mediaeval prison 
system. The North might fairly plead that its efforts to 
reform its judicial and punitive system are resisted by 
the lower elements of society, which have such power 
through choosing prosecutors and judges and legislators, 
in framing laws and constitutions, that the better elements 
cannot have things their own way. Not so in the South, 
where the Superior Race has absolute control of the mak- 
ing of law and the administering of justice, and the treat- 
ment of prisoners. Every judge in the South, except a 
few little justices of the peace, is a white man. Negroes, 
although still eligible to jury service, are rarely impan- 
eled, even for the trial of a Negro. Negro testimony is 
received with due caution; hardly any court will accept 
the testimony of one black against one white man. For 
failures in the administration of justice, for unwillingness 
to try men for homicide, for technicalities in procedure, 
for hesitancy of juries, the Superior Race is wholly respon- 
sible. The system is bad simply because the white people 
who are in control of the Southern state governments are 
willing that it should be bad. With all the machinery of 
U 203 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

legislation, and of the courts in its possession, the white 
race still resorts to forms of violence which sometimes 
strike an innocent man, and always brutalize the commu- 
nity, and lead to a contempt for the ordinary forms of 
justice. The place for the white people to begin a real 
repression of crime is by punishing their criminals without 
enslaving them. 



CHAPTEE XV 



LYNCHING 



THE defects in the administration of justice in the 
South are complicated by a recognized system of 
punishment of criminals and supposed criminals by 
other persons than officers of the law — a system to which the 
term Lynch Law is often applied. In part it is an effort 
to supplement the law of the commonwealths; in part it 
is a protest against the law's delay; in greater part a de- 
fiance of law and authority and impartial justice. 

In its mildest form this system of irresponsible juris- 
prudence takes the form of notices to leave the country, 
followed by whipping or other violence less than mur- 
derous, if the warning be disregarded. Such a method 
owes all its force to the belief that it proceeds from an 
organized and therefore a powerful race of people. Next 
in seriousness come the race riots of which there were 
many examples during the Eeconstruction era; and oc- 
casionally they burst into serious race conflicts, of which 
half a dozen have occurred in the last decade. The re- 
sponsibility rests in greater measure on that race which 
has the habit of calculated and concerted action : reckless 
Negroes can always make trouble by shooting at the Whites ; 
but the laws, the officers of justice, the militia, the courts, 
are in the hands of the white people. Since they are al- 
ways able to protect themselves by their better organiza- 

205 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

tion, their command of the police, and the conviction in 
the minds of both races that the white man will always 
come out victorious, most troubles that start with the 
Negroes could easily be dealt with, but for a panic terror 
of negro risings which harks back to slavery times. It is 
very easy to stampede Southern communities by such ru- 
mors. When, in 1908, six armed Negroes were arrested in 
Muskogee, Okla., telegrams went all over the country to 
the effect that a race war was on, and two companies of 
militia were ordered out; but apparently there was not 
a glimmer of real trouble. Negroes have repeatedly been 
driven out of small places. For instance, in August, 1907, 
in Onancock, on the eastern shore of Virginia, there was 
a dispute over a bill for a dollar and a quarter which 
ended with the banishment of a number of Negroes. In 
the year 1898 there was a similar riot in Wilmington, 
N. C, and several thousand Negroes were either ejected or 
left afterwards in terror. The trouble here began in ex- 
citement over the elections. 

By far the most serious of these occurrences was the 
so-called race riot at Atlanta, September .22, 1906, caused 
primarily by that intense hostility to the Negroes which 
is to be found among town youths; and secondarily by 
some aggravated crimes on the part of Negroes, and the 
equally aggravated crime of a newspaper, the Atlanta 
Evening News, which, by exaggerating the truth and add- 
ing lies, inflamed the public mind ; on the- night before the 
riot it called upon the people of Atlanta to join a league 
of men who '^ will endeavor to prevent the crimes, if pos- 
sible, but failing, will aid in punishing the criminals." 

The whole affair has been examined "by several compe- 
tent observers, but the essential facts may be taken from 
the report of a committee of business men of Atlanta, who 

206 



LYNCHING 

went into the matter at the time, and who declared that 
of the persons killed, " There was not a single vagrant. 
They were earning wages in useful work; . . . they were 
supporting themselves and their families. ... Of the 
wounded, ten are white and sixty colored. Of the dead, 
two are white and ten are colored.^' This was not a 
riot, but a massacre, for which the Superior Kace is respon- 
sible ; and from every point of view it was damaging to the 
whole South. It kept back foreign emigrants, it deeply 
discouraged the best of the Negroes in Atlanta and else- 
where ; it gave rein to the passions of the mob. Consider- 
ing that nobody was killed from among the mob, it seems 
like a ferocious practical joke that scores of Negroes were 
arrested and charged with murder, while not a single one 
of the hundreds of real murderers has ever received the 
slightest punishment. Who can wonder at the grief and 
anguish of DuBois^s " Litany of Atlanta ! " Every large 
place is liable to disturbance; Northern cities have had 
race riots, and are likely to have more. The recent as- 
saults on and murders of Negroes in Springfield, Ohio, and 
Springfield, 111., are not different in spirit from those in 
the South; and though there were plenty of indictments, 
the leader of the latter mob was acquitted on his trial — a 
result which was reflected in the famous Cairo mob of 1909. 
What progress can be made in breaking up the savage 
and criminal instincts of the Negro when he sees the 
same instincts in the Superior Race, which is in a position 
to do him harm? If the Negroes for any cause should 
in any Southern city, where they are in the majority, take 
possession of the streets and hunt white people to death 
as was done in Atlanta, it would bring on a race war 
which would devastate the whole South; and the lower 
race would be severely punished for aspiring to the same 

207 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

fashions in gunshots as its superiors. As a commercial 
traveler said on the general subject of race relations: 
"You do not understand how the young fellows in the 
South feel ; when any trouble comes, they want to kill the 
nigger, whether he has done anything or not." 

The third and most frequent form of race violence is 
lynching, a practice obscured by a mass of conventional 
and improbable statements. The subject has been set in its 
proper light in an impartial and scientific study by Pro- 
fessor Cutler entitled " Lynch Law," based on a compila- 
tion of statistics which come down to 1903. He sweeps 
away three fourths of the usual statements on the subject, 
first of all disproving the allegation that lynching is a com- 
paratively recent practice brought about by negro crimes 
since the Civil War. The term Lynch Law has been 
traced back to Colonel Charles Lynch, of Virginia, who, 
in Eevolutionary times, presided at rude assemblies which 
whipped Tories until they were willing to shout " Hurrah 
for Liberty ! " Till about 1830 lynching never meant kill- 
ing; it was applied only to whippings or to tarring and 
feathering. In the frontier conditions of the South and 
West, the habit grew up of killing desperadoes by mob 
law, as, for instance, the celebrated clearing out of five 
gamblers at Vicksburg, Miss., in 1835. This process was 
also applied to some murderers, both Whites and Negroes. 

Professor Cutler also disposes of the assertion that the 
most serious offense for which lynching is applied was un- 
known previous to emancipation. In 1823, a Negro in 
Maryland was badly beaten, though not killed, for a sup- 
posed attack upon a white woman. In 1827 one was 
burned at the stake in Alabama for killing a white man. 
From that time on, lynching of blacks continued in every 
Southern state — commonly for murder, in a few cases for 

208 



LYNCHING 

insurrection, in at least nine ascertained cases previous 
to the Civil War for violence to white women. It is evi- 
dent, therefore, that the extremest crime had been some- 
times committed, and the extremest punishment exacted 
by mob violence before the slaves were set free. 

The lynching of Negroes was kept up after the war, 
and carried into a system by the Ku Klux Klan and later 
White Caps, though usually applied by them for political 
reasons. About 1880 lynching of Negroes began to in- 
crease, nominally because of more frequent rapes of white 
women ; and to this day one often hears it said : " Lynch- 
ings never occur except for the one crime." In the twenty- 
two years from 1882 to 1903, Cutler has recorded 3,337 
cases of lynchings, an average of 150 a year, rising to the 
number of 235 in 1892. In 1903 there were 125 persons 
lynched and 125 executed legally. Of these lynchings, 
1,997 took place in the Southern states, 363 in the West- 
ern states, 105 in the Eastern states, and not a single one 
in New England. Of the 3,337 lynchings, 1,169 were of 
Whites (109 for rape) and 2,168 were Negroes, thus com- 
pletely disposing of the notion that this practice either 
began because of negro crime, or was continued as a 
safeguard against it. Of the blacks lynched, 783 were 
charged with murder; 707 with violence to women; 101: 
with arson; 101 with theft; and from that on down to 
such serious crimes as writing a letter, slapping a child, 
making an insolent reply, giving evidence or refusing to 
give evidence. A Negro was lynched in 1908 for killing 
a constable's horse. 

The common notion that rape of white women, the 
most serious crime committed by Negroes, is on the in- 
crease, is also exploded by these statistics, which show that 
the proportion, which has been as high as one half of all 

209 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

lynchings, has come down, to about one fourth. It may- 
be said, therefore, without fear of contradiction that lynch- 
ing did not originate in offenses by Negroes, is not justi- 
fied by any increase of crime, and is applied to a multitude 
of offenses, some of them simply trivial. 

Successful attempts have been made to lynch Negroes 
in Northern states, and in 1903 one was burned at the 
stake, in Wilmington, Del., which, however, is a former 
slave state, and the last to adhere to the whipping-post. 
Lynching has also much diminished in the West, so that 
it is becoming more and more a Southern crime. In 1903, 
75 of the 84 lynchings were in the South, in 1907 the 
total lynchings had come do^vn to 63, of which 42 were in 
the four states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and 
Georgia, and only 2 in the North. The proportion of 
causes of lynchings remained about the same : murder, 18 ; 
violence to women, 12; attempted violence, 11; miscella- 
neous causes, 22. 

The methods of the lynchers are very simple. In 1906 
a white man, accused of murdering his brother, on whose 
case the jury had disagreed, was dragged out of jail and 
shot. In a great many cases the supposed criminal is 
hunted down by what is called a " posse " — really a self- 
appointed body of furious neighbors; and very seldom is 
there the semblance of investigation. If the offender is 
lodged in jail, that sanctuary of the law is often invaded. 
In August, 1906, a mob of three thousand men, incited 
by a person who afterwards proved to be a released con- 
vict, broke open the jail at Salisbury, N. C, in despite of 
addresses by the mayor and United States senator, took out 
and killed three supposed negro criminals. Occasionally, 
when a criminal has been tried, convicted, and is awaiting 
execution, he is taken out and lynched, for the excitement 

210 



LYNCHING 

of seeing the man die, and perhaps from fear that he will 
be pardoned. 

Naturally, in this quick method, mistakes sometimes 
occur. At Brookhaven, Miss., on January 2, 1908, a Ne- 
gro was lynched for killing a white man ; a few days later 
they caught the actual murderer, but consoled themselves 
with the belief that inasmuch as the first Negro was 
wounded when captured, the presumption was that he 
must have killed some other white man. A few days later, 
at Dothan, Ala., a Negro was taken out, hanged, and two 
hundred shots fired at him, but was found the next morn- 
ing alive and unwounded, and was allowed to escape. In 
a recent case at Atlanta a Negro positively identified by 
the victim of a most serious crime was allowed to go to 
trial, and was acquitted, because the court believed him 
innocent, and the woman subsequently identified another 
man. 

How does it come about that these mobs, composed in- 
variably of white men and none others, cannot be put 
down by the white authorities? The first reason is that 
there are no rural police in the South to make prompt 
arrests and protect prisoners; the sheriffs upon whom the 
custody of such persons depends are chosen by popular 
election, and usually have no backbone; one of them who 
had actually lodged his prisoners in jai] said that he hated 
to do it, and didn't know how he could meet his neighbors. 
Jailors commonly give up their ke3's after a little protest; 
there are few cases where a determined sheriff, armed and 
ready to do his duty, could not quell a mob ; but what can 
be expected of a sheriff who turns over a prisoner to the 
mob in order that they may " investigate " his crime ? 
Occasionally a sheriff shows some pluck, and in December, 
1906, President Koogevelt singled out for federal appoint- 

211 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ment a sheriff who had lost his reelection because he had 
opposed a mob. Governors are sometimes very weak- 
kneed ; a few years ago the governor of North Carolina de- 
livered up to a mob a colored boy who had had such con- 
fidence in the Superior Race as to come to the executive 
mansion and ask for protection. At Annapolis, in 1908, 
neither the sheriff, jailor, nor municipal authorities made 
any effort to prevent the taking out of a prisoner ; in Chat- 
tanooga, Sheriff Shipp, who permitted a Negro to be taken 
out of his hands and l}Tiched', though the sheriff had been 
served by telegram with an order from a justice of the 
Supreme Court directing him to protect the criminal, was |, 
reelected by a large majority; and apparently did not lose l{ 
popularity when a year later he was sentenced to ninety 
days' confinement for contempt of court. 

In all the Southern states the last state resort for keep- 
ing the peace is the militia, and there have recently been 
two scandalous instances where these volunteer soldiers 
have permitted themselves to be overrun by a mob, giving 
up their guns without an effort to fire a shot. In one of 
these cases it was recorded that '^ No effort was made to 
hurt any of the soldiers however, as it was plain to the 
crowd that they had gained their point." At Brookhaven, 
Miss., in 1908, the officer commanding the militia excused 
himself because the sheriff had not asked him to order his 
men to fire. These brave soldiers, these high-toned South- 
ern gentlemen, these military heroes, called out for the 
special purpose of protecting a prisoner, would not draw a 
trigger ! 

The militia of course are not cowards, they are simply 
sympathizers with the mob; and throughout the South, 
in the press, and from the lips of many otherwise high- 
minded people, lynching is freely justified. Witness a cor- 

212 



LYNCHING 

oner's jury in Charlotte, N. C. : "We, the . . . jury to 
inquire into the cause of the death of Tom Jones, find that 
he came to his death by gunshot wounds, inflicted by par- 
ties unknown to the jury, obviously by an outraged public 
acting in defense of their homes, wives, daughters, and 
children. In view of the enormity of the crime committed 
by said Tom Jones, ... we think they would have been 
recreant to their duty as good citizens had they acted 
otherwise." The rector of St. Luke's Church, Jackson- 
ville, says : " I write as an upholder of law and order ; as 
one who deprecates and denounces mob law; but I write 
as one who holds that law is but the will of the majority 
in a democracy, and that will is that every time a negro 
criminally assaults, or attempts to assault, a white woman, 
he shall be dealt with by mob law, which is law after all. 
Only I would say, let that mob be certain, *^ beyond a 
reasonable doubt,' that they have the right man." Listen 
to the Atlanta Georgian: "Some good citizens will say 
they are shocked, and deplore these evil conditions, and 
the demoralization they are going to produce, and all that, 
but they really ain't shocked, although they think they are, 
and under proper provocation they would be lynchers them- 
selves." Even the late D. H. Chamberlain, once Recon- 
struction governor of South Carolina, says : " Practically I 
come very near to saying that I do not blame the South 
for resorting to lynching for this crime," and Benjamin 
R. Tillman, Senator of the United States, has publicly 
declared : " I will lead a mob to lynch a man at any time 
who has attacked a woman, whether he be white or black," 
and that it would probably be necessary " to send some 
more niggers to hell." 

The standard published reason for this acquiescence in 
Ijrnching is that the usual course of law is inadequate; 

213 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

people point to the legal delays and the technicalities of 
the courts, courts organized by white men, held by white 
judges, influenced by white counsel, before a white jury. 
They claim that lynching is a rude sort of primitive jus- 
tice, "an ultimate sanction" which is simply a speedier 
form of law, though mobs are notoriously easily confused 
as to persons and circumstances. They consider lynching 
necessary in order to prevent the taking of testimony in 
open court in cases of rape, a necessity which any legisla- 
ture could obviate. They plead that lynching is the only 
penalty which will keep the Negro in bounds, although 
there are such strings of lynchings as show conclusively 
that the publicity given to sickening details makes lynch- 
ing simply a breeder of crime. In the little town of 
Brookhaven, Miss., there were two lynchings in the 
first eight weeks of 1908. The Southern defenders of 
lynching set forth the solemnity of this form of execu- 
tion, closing their eyes to the fearful barbarities which 
have accompanied many cases and are likely to occur 
any day. 

The most cogent reason for the practice of lynching 
is that it gives an opportunity for the exercise of a deep- 
seated race hostility. Most of the murders and other 
crimes which lead to lynchings happen where Whites and 
Negroes are living close together. A lynching is an oppor- 
tunity for the most furious and brutal passions of which 
humanity is capable, under cover of a moral duty, and 
witliout the slightest danger of a later accountability. 
Spectators go to a lynching, as perhaps they went to the 
witch trial in Salem, or a treason case under Lord Jeffreys, 
to get a shuddering sensation. Kindred of the injured 
ones are invited to come to the front with hot irons and 
gimlets; special trains have repeatedly been furnished, on 

214 



1 



LYNCHING 

request to the railroads, in order to carry parties of 
lynchers; in several instances the burning at the stake 
of Negroes has been advertised by telegraph, and special 
trains have been put on to bring spectators. After the 
auto da fe is over, white people scramble in the ashes for 
bits of bone. Within a few months a black woman was 
burned at the stake by a mob, though everybody knew 
she had committed absolutely no offense except to accom- 
pany her husband when he ran away after committing 
a murder. These are not incidents of every lynching, 
they are not condoned by those Southerners who disapprove 
of lynching; but when you have turned a tiger loose and 
given , him a taste of blood, you are not entitled to say 
that you have no responsibility for innocent people whom 
he may devour. 

The whole fabric of defense of lynching, which in 
some cases and for some crimes is justified by the large 
majority of educated white men and women in the South, 
may be exploded into fragments by a single test. If lynch- 
ing under any circumstances is for the good of the com- 
munity, why not legalize it? Why does not some state 
come out of the ranks of modern civilized communities in 
which public courts replace private vengeance and torture 
has ceased to be a part of judicial process, and enact that 
in every town the adult men shall constitute a tribunal 
which — on the suggestion that somebody has committed 
a crime — shall apprehend the suspect, and, with the has- 
tiest examination of the facts, shall forthwith condemn 
him to be hanged, shot, or burned, and shall constitute 
themselves executioners, after due notice to the railroads 
to bring school children in special trains to witness the 
proceedings, and with the right to distribute the bones and 
ashes to their friends as souvenirs? Then the whole pro- 

215 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

ceeding may be inscribed on the public records, so that 
later generations may see the care that has been taken 
to prevent lawlessness. 

It would be unjust to leave this subject as though 
Southern people spent their lives in breathing out threat- 
enings and slaughter. With all the conversation about 
homicide, all the columns of lurid dispatches about lynch- 
ings, in which again white people pen the dispatches and 
white editors vivify them, the everyday atmosphere seems 
peaceful enough; the traveler, the ordinary business and 
professional man, feels no sense of insecurity. Still one 
wonders just what was in the mind of the Alabamian who, 
after driving a Yankee a hundred miles through a wild 
part of his state, prepared to return by another way, but 
remarked : " I wouldn't be afraid to drive right back over 
the same road that we came.'' The chance that a respect- 
able man in the South, who attends to his own business, 
will be shot, is very much greater than in any other civil- 
ized country; but powerful influences are at work to bring 
about better things. There are some indications that the 
Negroes will be compelled to give up carrying weapons, 
and then, perhaps, some of the Whites can also be disarmed. 
Sensible people deplore the insecurity of life. As for race 
violence, nobody who knows the South can doubt that the 
feeling of hatred and hostility to the Negro as a Negro, 
perhaps to the white man as a white man, is sharper than 
ever before; but that is the feeling of those members of 
both races who have no responsibility, of the idle town 
loafer, of the assistant plantation manager who could make 
more money if his hands would work better. On the other 
side stand the upbuilders of the commonwealth, the educa- 
tors, the professional classes, the plantation owners, the 
capitalists, most of whom wish the Negro well, oppose 

216 



LYNCHING 

violence and injustice, and are willing to cooperate with 
the best element of the Negroes in freeing the South from 
its two worst enemies — the black brute, and the white 
amateur executioner. 



CHAPTER XVI 



ACTUAL WEALTH 



IN every discussion of Southern affairs an important 
thing to reckon with is a fixed belief that the South 
is the most prosperous part of the country, which fits 
in with the conviction that it has long surpassed all other 
parts of the world in civilization, in military ardor, and 
in the power to rise out of the sufferings of a conquered 
people. This belief is hard to reconcile with the grim fact 
that the South under slavery was the poorest section of the 
country. Visitors just before the outbreak of the Civil 
War, such as Olmsted, and Eussell, the correspondent of 
the London Times, were struck by the poverty of the South, 
which had few cities, short and poor railroads, scanty 
manufacturing establishments, and in general small accu- 
mulations of the buildings and especially of the stocks of 
goods which are the readiest evidences of wealth. Some 
rich families there were with capital not only to buy slaves, 
but to build railroads and cities ; and when the Civil War 
broke out there was in service a quantity of independent 
banking capital. A delusion of great wealth was created 
by the listing as taxable property of slaves to the amount 
of at least two thousand millions. Although the legal right 
to appropriate the proceeds of the labor of the Negroes 
was transferable, it could go only to some of the 300,000 
slaveholding families ; and no bill of sale or tax list could 

218 



ACTUAL WEALTH 

make wealth out of this control of capacity to produce in 
the future; or if it was wealth, then the North with its 
larger laboring population of far larger productivity was 
entitled to add five or six thousand millions to its estimate 
of wealth. The South was made richer and not poorer by 
unloosing the bonds of the negro laborer. 

All the world knows that from 1865 to 1880 the South 
was comparatively a poor community, not because of the 
loss of slaves, but from the exhaustion of capital by the 
Civil V/ar, and the disturbance of productive labor. The 
opportunity for a fair comparative test did not come till 
the region settled down again; and then the output in 
proportion to the working population remained decidedly 
small when compared with European countries, and still 
smaller when compared with the Northern states. 

During the last quarter century, however, the South has 
experienced the greatest prosperity that it has ever known. 
Its progress since 1883 has been such that an edito- 
rial in a Southern newspaper says: "Leaving her mines 
and her mills out of the question, the great South is 
rich in the products of her fields alone — richer than all 
the empires of history. She is self-contained, and what is 
more, she is self-possessed, and she has set her face reso- 
lutely against the things which will hurt her." Since that 
statement was printed the material conditions of the South 
have improved, population has steadily increased; and the 
resources of the section have more than kept pace with it, 
manufactures have wonderfully developed, industry has 
been diversified, railroads and trolley lines are extended by 
Southern capital; the production of coal has been enor- 
mously increased; the utilization of the abundant water 
powers for electrical purposes is beginning; most of the 
older cities have been enlarged ; and new centers of popu- 
15 219 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

lation have sprung up. The traveler by the main high- 
ways from Washington through Atlanta to ISTew Orleans, or 
from Cincinnati through Chattanooga and Memphis to 
Galveston, sees a section abounding in prosperity. 

What are the sources of this wealth? First of all 
comes the soil ; beginning with the black lands in western 
Georgia and running through the lower Mississippi val- 
ley to the black lands of Texas, lies one of the richest 
bodies of land in the world, comparable with the plains 
of Eastern China. It is a soil incredibly rich and, once 
cleared of trees, easy of cultivation; blessed with a large 
rainfall and abundance of streams. This belt, in which 
the greater part of the Southern cotton is raised, is the 
foundation of the prosperity of the South, which for 
that reason is likely to continue permanently a farming 
community. 

These rich soils are not to be had for the asking, and 
fully improved lands, especially the few plantations that 
are undrained, bring prices up to $100 an acre or more, 
but uncleared land is still very cheap, and away from the 
Black Belt may be had at low prices, especially in the piney 
woods regions, which when fertilized are productive and 
profitable. 

Among the most valuable Southern lands are those un- 
der culture for fruits and "truck." This is one of the 
few methods of intensive agriculture practiced in the 
South. Success in such farming depends on climate, ac- 
cessibility to market, and skill. A belt of land in Eastern 
Texas which has good railroad communication with the 
North, has suddenly become one of the most prosperous 
parts of the South because its season is several weeks 
earlier than that of most of its competitors. Truck 
farming bids fair to change the conditions of the Sea 

220 



ACTUAL WEALTH 

Islands, of the Carolinas and of Georgia, since they are 
in easy and swift communication with the great Northern 
markets. 

Scattered everywhere throughout the South are enor- 
mous areas of swamp land, partly in the deltas of the 
rivers, and partly caught between the hills. Under vari- 
ous acts of Congress 8,000,000 acres of so-called " swamp 
lands " were given to the states including much rich bot- 
tom land. The South is now making a demand upon the 
Federal Government to assume toward those lands a respon- 
sibility akin to that for the irrigated tracts in the Far 
West, and it seems likely that either a Federal or State 
system will undertake the reclamation of large tracts. The 
legislature of Florida, for instance, has authorized the levy 
of a drainage tax for the drainage of the everglades, where 
millions of acres could be made available. At present all 
the Federal projects under way, though they involve 2,- 
000,000 acres and $70,000,000 of expenditure, are in the 
Far West and on the Pacific Slope. 

The fundamental fact that the South is mainly agricul- 
tural is brought out by the statistics of occupations in 
1900. The greater part of the population of both white 
and black races is on the soil. By the census of 1900, in 
sixteen states counted Southern, thirty-eight per cent of 
the population were bread-winners. Out of the total pop- 
ulation of 23,000,000 there were 8,100,000 persons engaged 
in gainful occupations, of whom 814,000 were in large 
cities and the remaining 7,300,000 in small cities and the 
country. The rapid growth of towns and small cities is 
due to the prosperity of the open country; and hence the 
large city is less important and less likely to absorb the 
rural population than is the case in the North. 

Except the Pacific Northwest no part of the Union is 
221 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

so rich in timber as the South. Until about ten years ago, 
enormous areas of timber land were so far from railroads 
that nobody could think of lumbering them ; now that the 
hills of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the 
Carolinas are penetrated with main lines, now that branches 
are pushed out and that logging trams stretch still far- 
ther, few spots lie more than fifteen miles from rails. Be- 
fore sawmills arrive, men can earn fair day wages at cut- 
ting railway ties and hauling them as much as fifteen 
miles, so that the poor land-owners have one unfailing cash 
resource. Up to the financial depression of 1907, lumber- 
ing o'f every kind was very prosperous; new mills were 
under construction and a large amount of labor found 
employment. In 1908 many concerns were shut down, 
and planters were rejoiced because Negroes were coming 
back to them for employment. The check to lumbering is 
only temporary. The South still furnishes more than 
one third of the total product of the country ; and Louisi- 
ana comes next to the state of Washington in the amount 
of annual cut. But, as a native puts it, " Timber is a'git- 
tin' gone^'; and in ten years most of the Southern states 
will approach the condition of Michigan and Wisconsin in 
the decline of that industry. Nevertheless, one may still 
ride or drive for days through splendid pine forests that 
have hardly seen an ax. In most places when the timber 
is cut, farming comes in, and that is the cause of the ex- 
traordinary prosperity of the " piney woods " belt, through 
southern Georgia and Alabama ; where the farmer of a 
few years ago was making a scanty living, he is now able 
to sell his timber, to clear the land, and to begin cotton 
raising on a profitable scale. 

The South is conscious of the wastage of its timber re- 
sources, for the cut is now advancing far up on the liighest 

222 



ACTUAL WEALTH 

slopes of the mountain ranges ; hence the Southern mem- 
bers of Congress have joined with New Englanders in sup- 
porting a bill for an Appalachian Forest Eeserve, which 
would set apart considerable areas at intervals from Mount 
Washington in New Hampshire to Mount Mitchell in 
North Carolina, to be administered by the federal govern- 
ment in about the same fashion as the similar reserves in 
the Eocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade 
Eanges. This movement is greatly strengthened by the 
manufacturers^ who believe that the water powers require 
a conservation of the upper forests. 

Growing trees are available not only for lumber and 
railroad ties, but for turpentine, and any two of these 
processes, or even all three, may be going on at the same 
time. On a tract of pine land, no matter where, usually 
the first process is to box the trees for turpentine, and the 
men in the business sometimes buy the land outright, but 
oftener simply pay a royalty. For this privilege the old- 
fashioned price was a cent a tree, which would be about 
$40 or $50 for a 160-acre tract; but lately farmers have 
received as much as a thousand dollars for the turpentine 
on their farms. The box or cut in the trunk can be en- 
larged upward every year for five years; then if the tree 
is left untouched for six or seven years it may be back- 
boxed on the other side and will yield again for five or 
six years; so that it takes about twenty years to exhaust 
the turpentine from a given area. The flow from the 
incision, collected in a hollow cut out of the wood, or 
by a better modern method of spigots and cups, not unlike 
that used for maple trees, is periodically collected and car- 
ried to the still, where the turpentine is distilled over, and 
the heavier residue makes the commercial resin. At the 
prices of the last few years this "naval stores" industry 

223 



-sy THE SOUTHEKN SOUTH 

has been profitable and millions of trees are still being 
tapped. 

In mining, the South has no such position as in timber. 
The coal product is respectable and growing — in 1906 
nearly 40 million tons, which was a ninth of the national 
product. Iron ore is also plentiful; and lead and zinc 
are abundant in Missouri. Of the output of more than a 
hundred millions of precious metals, not half a million can 
be traced to the South — and there are no valuable copper 
mines. 

" Varsification, that's what we want/' was the dictum 
of the sage of a country store in the South ; and diversifi- 
cation the South has certainly attained. The annual 
money value of manufactured products has now become 
considerably greater than of the agricultural products, 
though of course the crops are the raw materials to many 
manufactures. In 1880 the manufactured products of the 
South were under 500 million dollars, or one eleventh of 
the total of the United States; in 1900 they had risen to 
1,500 millions, or about one ninth of the total; and in 
1905 they were 2,200 millions — a seventh of the total. 

The most striking advance in manufactures has been in 
iron, the production of pig rising from 1,600,000 tons in 
1888 to 3,100,000 in 1906, a seventh of the national total; 
a prosperity due in part to the close proximity of excellent 
ore and coal. But the production in other parts of the 
Union has increased even more rapidly, so that the 
proportion of iron made in the South is smaller than 
at any time in twenty years. One difficulty of the manu- 
facture is that it requires besides the crude labor of the 
Negroes a large amount of skilled labor, which cannot be 
furnished by the Poor Whites or the Mountain Whites. 

Another large manufacture is that of tobacco., which is 
224 



ACTUAL WEALTH 

grown in quantities in many of the Southern states, par- 
ticularly in North Carolina and Kentucky, the great centers 
of the tobacco industry being Eichmond, Durham (North 
Carolina), and Louisville. The tobacco factories are one of 
the few forms of manufacture in which Negroes are em- 
ployed for anything except crude raw labor. 

In distilled spirits the South produces nearly a third of 
the whole annual output — ^the greater part in Kentucky; 
the Lower South does not provide for the slaking of its 
own thirst ; and of the milder alcoholic drinks consumed in 
the whole country, the South furnishes only about a tenth. 
This success in manufactures is due in part to cheap 
power, for both fuel and water power are abundant and 
easily available; and since the South requires little fuel 
for domestic purposes, it has the larger store for its fac- 
tories and railroads. The South has also become a large 
producer of petroleum, phosphates, and sulphur, and in its 
bays and adjacent coasts has the material for a valuable 
fishing industry. 

For carrying on these various lines of business, the 
South is indebted in part to Northern and foreign cap- 
ital; but very large enterprises are supported entirely by 
the accumulations of Southern capitalists ; and the savings 
of the region are turned backward through a good banking 
system into renewed investments. The South before the 
Civil War was probably better supplied with small banks 
lending to farmers than in any other part of the Union, 
and in the last ten years a similar system has been again 
worked out. There are nearly 1,500 national banks in the 
South, of which two thirds have been founded since 1900; 
and in addition, there are numerous joint stock and private 
banks. That the business is sound is shown by the fact that 
practically all the Southern banks weathered the crisis of 

225 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

1907, which was more severe there than in the North. In a 
very remote rural parish of Louisiana, in a small and seedy 
county seat, is a little bank opened in November, 1907, 
which, within two months, had accumulated $65,000 of 
deposits, and was still enlarging. Through these widely 
distributed banks capital is supplied to small industries and 
to opportunities of profit which would otherwise be neg- 
lected. 

One needs actually to pass over the face of the South in 
order to realize how much progress has been made in trans- 
portation facilities. That section has always been alive to 
the necessity of getting its crops to market, and Charleston 
has for a century been at work on communications with the 
interior; and the Pedee Canal, the first commercial canal 
in the United States, was constructed in 1795 to bring the 
crops to that port. The navigable reaches of the South- 
ern rivers up to the "fall line" were early utilized for 
light-draught steamers, of which some still survive. Turn- 
pike roads were also built into the interior of the state ; and 
the railroad from Charleston to Hamburg — 140 miles — 
completed in the thirties, was the longest continuous line 
of railroad then in existence. Down to the Civil War 
Charleston had an ambitious scheme for a direct line across 
the mountains to Cincinnati. The effort to keep transpor- 
tation up to the times for various reasons was not success- 
ful; settlements were sparse, exports other than cotton 
scanty, distances great, free capital limited. 

In the last ten years the South has seen a wonderful 
advance in railroad transportation. States like Louisiana 
and Georgia are fairly gridironed with railroads, and new 
ones building all the time : indeed, in the " Delta " of Mis- 
sissippi a railroad can live on local business if it has a 
belt of its own twelve miles wide. 

226 



ACTUAL WEALTH 

Nevertheless, the present railroad system in the South, 
comprising about 80,000 miles, has been mostly built since 
1880. This system includes several lines from the Middle 
West to the seaboard, so that Baltimore, the James Kiver 
ports, New Orleans, and Galveston are enriched by com- 
merce passing through their ports to regions outside the 
Southern states. Nevertheless, as will be seen in the next 
chapter, this means that the great distributing centers in 
the Union are outside the limits of the South. 

The progress of the country is measured also by the 
great improvement in accommodation for travelers. The 
testimony is general that down to about 1885 there were, 
outside half a dozen cities, no really good hotels to be found 
in the South ; now you may travel from end to end of the 
region and find clean, comfortable, and modern accommo- 
dations in almost every stopping place. The demands of 
the drummers are in part responsible for this gratifying 
state of things. 

The country roads do not share in the advance. Nom- 
inally the South has over 600,000 miles of public highway, 
but little of it has even been improved. Some of the old 
pikes have gone to ruin, others are still kept up by tolls; 
but in many regions which have been well settled and thriv- 
ing for a century and a half there is a dearth of bridges, 
and in bad weather the roads are almost impassable. So 
far, the difficulty is not much relieved by trolley lines. 
The cities are well supplied and some of them have a su- 
perior system; but few parts of the South have such a 
string of populous places as will justify interurban lines, 
exceptions being the Richmond-Norfolk and Dallas-Fort 
Worth systems. The trolley lines have been much devel- 
oped by a Northern syndicate which, under the name of 
Stone & Webster, has made a business of buying or build- 

227 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ing and operating electric plants, many of them with elab- 
orate water power ; and the current is distributed for power; 
light, and transportation. Stone & Webster's lines can be 
found all over the Union, as in Minneapolis and in the 
state of Washington, as well as in the South. The capital • 
of the trolley roads in 1906 was 3,765 millions, or a fifth 
of the total trolley investment in the United States. 

At the best points of contact between rail and water 
transportation great port enterprises are springing up. 
Galveston is the only port along the whole coast of Texas 
with easily obtainable deep water, and the Government has 
spent great sums in improving it, while the city has made 
the most gallant effort to rebuild and fortify itself against 
the invasion of the sea which a few years ago almost de- 
stroyed it. New Orleans feels itself the natural port of 
the lower Mississippi valley, and the Eads system of jetties 
keeps the mouth of the river open, though there is not 
water enough to float the great steamers that come into 
the large Atlantic ports, and the wharf charges are heavy ; 
the actual commerce of New Orleans — exports and imports 
together— was in 1907 $28,000,000 less than that of Gal- 
veston. Inasmuch as New Orleans is a hundred miles from 
the open sea, an effort has been made to provide capital 
to build a gulf port about fifty miles to the eastward, but 
so far little progress has been made. The city of New 
Orleans has shown unusual enterprise in building a public 
belt line railroad ten miles long, intended to connect with 
all the roads entering the city; and the city thus steps 
alongside Cincinnati as the owner of a veritable municipal 
steam railroad. Between these ports there is unceasing 
rivalry, and the depth of water on the bar outside Gal- 
veston, or at the mouth of the Mississippi, is as interest- 
ing to the Southern business man as the bulletin of a 

228 



ACTUAL WEALTH 

football game is to a Northerner. Texas will prove to 
you by science, logic, and prophecy that no deep-draught 
vessel can get into New Orleans, or pay the awful port 
charges after it arrives; the Louisianian is confident that 
the next typhoon will silt up those Texan lagoon harbors 
which have no great river behind to scour them out. 

Mobile, which is a place with increasing foreign com- 
merce, can never hope to lead deep water to its present 
wharves, but about twenty-two miles below the city is an 
opportunity to bring large ships nearly inshore, and that 
is likely to be the future port of Mobile. Pensacola is the 
special favorite of the Louisville & Nashville Eailroad, 
but seems to have no advantages which will bring it ahead 
of its neighbor Mobile. Of the lower Atlantic ports, Fer- 
nandina, Brunswick, Savannah, Charleston, and Wilming- 
ton are all limited in the depth of water, and several of 
them require difficult river navigation. The deep-water 
ports of Baltimore on the Chesapeake, and Norfolk, Ports- 
mouth, and Newport News on the lower James, are on the 
extreme borders of the South and depend for their pros- 
perity chiefly on Western commerce. 

The transportation business of the South, as in other 
parts of the Union, has drifted into the hands of a com- 
paratively few large corporations. The Southern Eailroad, 
the Atlantic Coast Line, the Seaboard Air Line, and the 
Louisville & Nashville include nearly all the railroads 
between Virginia and Mississippi. The Baltimore & Ohio, 
Chesapeake & Ohio, Norfolk & Western, and the new Vir- 
ginia Railroad connect the tide water of Virginia and North 
Carolina with the West. The Louisville & Nashville, Illi- 
nois Central, the Missouri Pacific and Queen and Crescent 
road.> stretch southward from the Middle Western states to 
the ' rulf. In Texas three or four railway systems com- 

229 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

pete for the business between the upper trans-Mississippi 
country and the Gulf, and there is a bewildering complex 
of branch lines. The net result is that the South outside 
the mountains is gridironed with railways. The areas 
more than ten miles from a railroad line in the South are 
now comparatively small. For this reason may be ex- 
pected a more rapid development of the resources and 
wealth of that section in the next ten years than in the 
last decade. 



CHAPTEK XVII 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 



WEALTH the South possesses — large wealth, grow- 
ing wealth, greater wealth than that section has 
ever before approached. So agreeable is this 
state of things that Southern writers are inclined not only 
to set forth their prosperity but to claim that theirs is the 
most prosperous part of the whole country and is soon to 
become the richest. As Edmonds puts it in his " Facts 
about the South " : " Against the poverty, the inexperience, 
the discredit and doubt at home and abroad of ourselves 
and our section of 1880, the South, thrilled with energy 
and hope, stands to-day recognized by the world as that sec- 
tion which of all others in this country or elsewhere has the 
greatest potentialities for the creation of wealth and the 
profitable employment of its people." The Southern state- 
ments of the poverty of the South from 1865 to 1880 are 
more easily verified. The tracks of armies outside Virginia 
and parts of Tennessee were narrow; but at the end of the 
war the South had exhausted all its movable capital; the 
banks were broken ; the state and Confederate bonds worth- 
less ; the railroads ruined ; the cities disconsolate. And the 
labor system was, for a time, much disturbed, though never 
disrupted. As Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, puts it: 
" The South ! The South ! It is no problem at all. The 
whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence : 

231 



THE SOUTHEEN" SOUTH 

She was rich, she lost her riches; she was poor and in 
bondage ; she was set free, and she had to go to work ; she 
went to work, and she is richer than ever before. You see 
it was a ground-hog case. The soil was here, the climate 
was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of 
slavery." 

The immense increase of wealth and productivity since 
1880 is equally unquestionable. When it comes to the 
claim that it is the most prosperous part of the world, it 
cannot be accepted offhand. The fact that the South is 
well off does not prove that it is better off than its neigh- 
bors; the wealth and prosperity of the South are always 
limited by the character of its labor. Calculation of 
profits, adding of bank balances, cutting of coupons, have 
to some degree drawn men's minds away from the race 
question ; but on the other hand the demand for labor and 
the losses of dividends or of opportunities to make money 
because the labor is inefficient are ever renewed causes of 
exasperation. At all times the South is subject to re- 
verses like those of other regions. The crisis of 1907 hit 
that section hard by cutting down the demand for timber, 
minerals, iron, and other staples, and was one of the fac- 
tors in a decline in cotton which touched the pocket nerve 
of the South; and the railroads felt the loss of business. 
Still, most Southern enterprises weathered the storm, and 
in 1909 the tide of prosperity is mounting again. 

If it be true that the South is the most prosperous part 
of the world, a disagreeable responsibility falls upon some- 
body for having less than the best schools, libraries, build- 
ings, roads, and other appliances of civilization; if it be 
not true, there must be some defect in the social or indus- 
trial system which out of such splendid materials produces 
less than a fair proportion of the world's wealth. To* be 

232 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

sure a section or a state might lag behind in production and 
yet forge ahead in education, in the harmony of social 
classes, in respect for law, in good order. Switzerland is 
not a rich country, but it is an advanced country. The 
claims of superior productiveness can with difficulty be 
tested. The relative status of the two sections in intellect- 
ual and governmental ways has been examined in earlier 
chapters and the South cannot claim supremacy there. A 
similar comparison shall now be made as to the relative 
production and accumulation of the two sections. 

A criterion of wealth much relied upon by Southern 
writers is the movement of commerce. We are told that 
two fifths of the inward and outward movement of foreign 
trade passes through Southern ports. The truth is that in 
1907 that figure was $883,000,000 as against $2,432,000,- 
000 in all Northern Atlantic, Lake and Pacific ports. The 
bulk of this Southern business, however, is in exports — 
$742,000,000— a third of the total. Not a tenth of all the 
imports came into Southern ports, and three fourths of 
that through the three ports of Baltimore, Galveston, and 
New Orleans, from all which a part goes into non- Southern 
states. The explanation is that through the Southern 
ports pour the staples, but that the return cargoes, espe- 
cially of manufactures, go to Northern ports, even though 
part of it is later distributed to the South. A second cor- 
rection is due to the fact that about $536,000,000 of the 
exports goes through the five ports of Baltimore, Newport 
News, Norfolk and Portsmouth, New Orleans, and Galves- 
ton, all of which are entrepots for immense trade originat- 
ing beyond the limits of the South. For instance. New Or- 
leans and Galveston together shipped 24 million bushels 
of the 147 millions of wheat exports — ^practically not a 
Southern crop. Even in such an unreckoned increment of 

233 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

income as the federal pension lists, the South is less for- 
ward than the North, which drew 113 millions a year 
against 25 millions in the whole South and 11 millions in 
the seceded states — most of that to colored soldiers. 

The relative wealth of the two sections is best measured 
not by foreign trade but by internal production and by pub- 
lic income and expenditure, calculated on a per-capita basis. 
Of course conditions vary greatly from state to state; 
in Alabama there is steady farm work most of the year, 
while in North Dakota the winter is a time of comparative 
leisure; California uses agricultural machinery, South 
Carolina depends chiefly on hand tools; Wyoming is so 
young that it has had little time to accumulate capital, 
Tennessee has large accumulations. It would be unfair to 
compare Arkansas with Connecticut, or Illinois with Flor- 
ida, on a strictly per-capita basis. The only way to equal- 
ize conditions for a fair comparison is to take groups of 
states and set them against other groups of equivalent pop- 
ulation and of similar interests, so that local errors may 
neutralize each other. 

As a basis for such a comparison of resources, three 
sets of tables have been made up. The first sets apart 
the group of eleven seceding states with 17,000,000 
people (West Virginia not included) as being typically 
Southern ; and places against them a group of agricultural 
states extending from Indiana to Oklahoma, also contain- 
ing 17,000,000 people. The second tables include the 
whole South — viz., the fifteen former slaveholding states 
(excluding West Virginia), together with the District of 
Columbia, including a population of about 28,000,000 peo- 
ple ; to which is opposed the Middle West and Pacific states 
from Indiana to the Coast, together with Vermont and 
New Hampshire, which are added to make up a full 28,- 

234 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

000,000. To such comparisons the objection has been 
made that it averages the confessedly inferior rural negro 
population with the picked immigrants from the East and 
abroad in the Northwest. The objection is a concession of 
the lower average productive capacity of the South; but 
in order to compare the white elements of the two sec- 
tions by themselves, a third set of tables compares the 
whole South containing 17,900,000 whites and 8,000,- 
000 blacks against a group of Northern agricultural 
states with a population of 18,000,000 whites and 234,- 
000 blacks. 

The materials for such comparisons are various. Every 
traveler has his impressions of the relative prosperity of 
South and North based on what he sees of stations, public 
and private buildings, cities and stocks of goods, and on the 
appearance of farms and work-people throughout the coun- 
try. For precise indications, the population of the states 
is estimated year by year in the Bulletins of the Census 
Bureau; estimates of accumulated wealth are made every 
few years by the Department of Commerce; returns of 
annual crops by the Department of Agriculture; banking 
statistics by the Treasury Department. The annual Sta- 
tistical Abstract prints summaries of manufactures and 
other industry, and on these topics the Census Bureau issues 
valuable bulletins. For tax valuations there is no general 
official publication, but the World Almanac collects every 
year from state auditors a statement of assessments. Most 
of these sources must be accepted as simply a series of lib- 
eral estimates, but the factors of error are likely to be much 
the same in the Northern and the Southern communities, 
and at least they furnish the basis for a comparison in 
round numbers. The tax assessments are significant, be- 
cause they are revised from year to year, and the methods 
16 235 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 



^1 



of assessment are not very different in the various parts 
of the country and are likely to err by giving too low ^ 
value or omitting property, so that comparisons from tax 
returns are relatively more favorable to the poorer than 
to the richer communities. ^J 

7. The Eleven Seceding States. 

Tabulation based upon the principles stated above will 
be found in the Appendix to this volume; and a study 
of those tables reveals some interesting comparisons be- 
tween the eleven communities which formed the South- 
ern Confederacy and nineteen Western communities, the 
two groups each having in 1900 about nineteen million 
inhabitants. The assessed taxable valuation of the South- 
ern group in 1904 was 4,200 millions; in the Northern 
group it was 9,700 millions, or more than double. Four 
years later the valuations were 5,200 millions as against 
13,800 millions. Since tax assessments are subject to 
many variations, perhaps a fairer measure of sectional 
wealth is banking transactions. The bank deposits of the 
National groups of the Southern group were, in 1906, 700 
millions, in the Northern group, 2,400 millions. Bank 
clearings in the same year were respectively 4 billions 
and 8J billions. 

All the eleven seceding states together in 1906 valued 
their real estate at 2,900 millions, their personal at 1,800 
millions, total 4,700 millions. A corresponding Northern 
group (in which the richest state is Indiana), counts its 
real estate worth 7,700 millions, its personalty, 2,700 mil- 
lions, a total of 10,400 millions. That is, the Northern 
land and buildings are counted nearly thrice as valuable, 
and personalty about a half more valuable, though every- 

236 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

body knows that there is a vast deal of untaxed personalty 
in the North. 

The miles of railroad in the Southern group were 
55,000; in the Western, 94,000; the total value of agri- 
cultural products in the South was estimated at 1,060 
millions, in the North at 1,945 millions. Even the cot- 
ton crop of the eleven states, worth 550 millions, was 
overbalanced by the Northern corn crop which brought 595 
millions. The manufactures in the South for 1905 were 
1,267 millions; in the Northwest 2,932 millions. The 
Southern group expended for schools 26 millions, the cor- 
responding Northern states expended 91 millions. The 
value of Southern school property was 43 millions, of the 
Northern group it was 216 millions; the average annual 
expenditure per pupil in daily attendance in the South was 
$9.75; in the North about $28.45. For public benevolent 
institutions the South expended in 1903 net $3,000,000, 
the North $7,000,000; the Southern group had 1,070,000 
illiterate Whites, of whom 76,000 were foreign born; the 
Northern group had 207,000 besides 389,000 illiterate 
foreigners. In the indices of accumulated property the 
comparison is about the same; the Southern deposits in 
all banks were, in 1906, 701 million dollars, the Northern 
2,439 millions. In manufactures the Northern group, 
with a capital of 2,240 million dollars and 903,000 hands, 
produced 2,932 millions; against Southern capital of 
1,140 millions, employing 659,000 persons and producing 
1,267 millions. 

The comparison of valuations brings out one unexpected 
result, namely, that several of the Southern states have 
actually less taxable property now than they had fifty years 
ago. This does not mean that they are poorer because 
they have lost their slaves. Leaving slaves out of account, 

237 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

in 1860 South Carolina had a valuation of $326,000,000; 
in 1906 of $250,000,000; in Mississippi the valuation of 
real estate in 1860 was $158,000,000; in 1906, with a pop- 
ulation more than twice as great, it was $131,000,000 ; in 
the rich state of Georgia the valuation in 1860, deducting 
slaves, was $432,000,000 against $578,000,000 in 1906. 
The Southern people feel justly proud of the fact that the 
valuations of the eleven former members of the Confed- 
eracy between 1902 and 1906 increased by 962 millions, 
from a total of 3,799 millions to 4,761 millions, that their 
annual manufactures increased by 450 millions; from 
819 millions in 1900 to 1,267 millions in 1905. 

This increase in industry is so striking that the 
Southern states suppose they are unique in that respect; 
but the corresponding Northern group of equal population 
in the same periods gained 4,000 millions in valuations 
and 705 millions in annual manufactures. These figures 
may be checked off in various ways. Take, for instance, the 
annual value of crops ; the South is very certain that with 
its cotton, its corn and other crops together it is far in ad- 
vance of the North. In the Southern states which were 
in secession (excepting Texas) the value of farms and stock 
in 1900 was 2,100 millions, the value in an equivalent 
Northwestern group was 7,800 millions. The total farm 
product in the Lower South was 1,360 millions, in the 
Northern group of equal population 2,390 millions. If 
Texas be compared with a group of Pacific states, of 
equivalent population, the Texan farms are worth 960 mil- 
lions, the Far Western 1,400 millions. 

The Lower South has been saving money of late years 
and is proud of its growing bank deposits, from 168 mil- 
lions in 1896 to 701 millions in 1906, an increase of 450 
per cent; but the equivalent Northern population has in- 

238 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

creased from 716 millions to 2,439 millions. The Lower 
South in 1905 had 917 national banks with deposits of 308 
millions and assets of 568 millions; the similar Northern 
states had deposits of 834 millions and assets of 1,418 
millions. Let us see whether the South makes up this 
disparity by its state banks. In 1906 the Lower South, 
including Texas, had deposits of 700 millions in all banks ; 
and total bank clearings of about 3,920 millions; the 
equivalent Northern group had deposits of over 2,400 mil- 
lions, with total clearings of about 8,500 millions. Meas- 
ured, therefore, by accumulated savings, by bank capital, 
by clearings, the South, is poorer than the least wealthy 
section of the North. If we were to take the rich Eastern 
and Northwestern states, with their immense population, 
enormous manufactures (New York City contains over 
twenty thousand factories), and vast transportation lines, 
the fact that the South is far behind the North in things 
both material and intellectual would stand out even more 
clearly. 

//. The Whole South 

It might fairly be said that it is unreasonable to com- 
pare the former seceding states which have gone through 
the disruption of their labor by Civil War with new West- 
ern communities in which there has been no destruction of 
capital. Accordingly the second set of tables compares the 
whole South — fifteen states and the District of Columbia 
— with a Northwestern and Pacific Coast group of equiva- 
lent population. Since a part of the contention of South- 
ern writers is that the South was richer than the North 
before the Civil War and is only returning to her rightful 
place of supremacy, it is worth while to examine the sup- 
posed wealth of the South in 1860. The assessed valua- 

239 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

tion of the Lower South was then 4,330 millions, which a 
Southern statistician attempts to show w^as 750 millions 
more than the combined wealth of New England and the 
Middle states; out of this sum, 3,100 millions was for 
personal property, including about 1,200 millions for 
slaves ; but either the slaves should be left out or a capital- 
ized value of Northern laborers should be added on a slave- 
market basis. 

Passing by the figures of 1870, which are discredited by 
all statisticians, in 1880 the total property valued for taxes 
in the Lower South was 1,880 millions, in the whole South 
was 3,420 millions; while in similar blocks of North- 
western population they w^ere respectively 2,712 millions 
and 4,640 millions. This is a splendid record for a people 
who had given their all in a civil war and who had to build 
up nearly every dollar of their personal property from 
the bottom. The land, of course, was always there, but 
was worth much less per acre in 1880 than similar good 
land in 1860. 

How far has this rate of progress been continued since 
1880 as shown by the inexorable method of comparing 
groups of Southern states with groups of Northwestern 
states of equal population ? The tax valuation shows about 
the same proportion, so far as can be ascertained, to real 
values in one section as in the other. The local differences 
of mode of assessment when averaged would probably not 
disturb the result by more then ten per cent. The whole 
South (16 communities) as compared with a Northern 
group of the same number of people in 1907 showed 8.5 
billions of assessed property against 13.7 billions in the 
North. It may therefore be set down as proven that the 
taxable wealth of the lower agricultural South is less than 
half that of similar agricultural communities in the North; 

240 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

so that while mining and manufacturing states like Mary- 
land, Kentucky, and Missouri have about the same wealth 
as similar Northern communities, the South as a whole 
has not one half the wealth. Take the former slaveholding 
states all together, including such a rich commonwealth 
as Missouri, and the farm value in the whole region in 
1900, with 28 millions of people, was under 5,000 mil- 
lions; while 28 million people in the West and North- 
west owned farms to the amount of about 11,000 mil- 
lions, or more than double. The total Southern crops 
in 1899, the last year in which the totals are obtainable, 
were worth 1,360 millions, the Northern crops counted 
up to 2,390 millions. The value of the Southern corn 
crop in 1905 was 416 million dollars; the equivalent 
population in the Northwest raised 601 million dollars' 
worth of corn. The whole South raises about 32 million 
dollars' worth of oats; the North raises 201 millions. The 
Southern potato crop is worth 19 millions; the Northern, 
76 millions. Southern hay counts up to 66 millions and 
Northern to 258 millions. Even in tobacco, the North 
furnishes 7 million dollars' worth against 35 million dollars 
in the South. Cotton is the one crop that is exclusively 
Southern, and the crop of 1905, the year that we are con- 
sidering, including the seed, was worth 632 million dol- 
lars. The Southern group had 127,000 teachers, school 
property of 84 millions, and total school revenue of 45 
millions, against competing Northern figures of 199,000, 
of 293 millions, and of 120 millions. It is difficult in these 
figures to find justification for the notion that the South 
as an agricultural region is richer than the North, or is 
likely ever to rival it. 

The actual figures for the present conditions of the 
South are sufficiently attractive. During the four years 

241 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

1904-1907 the big crops and high price of cotton gave to 
the South such prosperity as it had never known before, 
the total output being nearly fifty million bales, which sold, 
in cash, for about 2,700 million dollars. This happy result 
was reflected in every city and every county of the rural 
South, for old debts were paid, new houses built, land 
doubled or even trebled in value, and a spirit of hopfulness 
pervaded the whole population. A buoyancy is reflected 
in the press, and particularly in the Manufacturers' Rec- 
ord of Baltimore, the leading Southern trade paper. " The 
South," says the Record, " is now throughout the world 
recognized as the predestined center of the earth, based on 
greater natural advantages that can be found anywhere 
else on the globe." Or as another Southern paper put it 
some years ago : "In 1860 the Richest Part of the Country 
— In 1870 the Poorest — In 1880 Signs of Improvement — 
In 1889 regaining the position of I860." 

Nobody can be more pleased with Southern prosperity 
than New Englanders, who have long since found out that 
the richer other sections of the country become, the more 
business Northerners have with those sections ; if there^are 
directions in which the South is making more rapid prog- 
ress than the North, it should be candidly acknowledged. 
Nobody can visit thriving cities like Richmond, Atlanta, 
Birmingham, Memphis, New Orleans, and the galaxy of 
future centers of population in Texas, without hearty 
pleasure in the increasing evidences of civilization, but it 
is very unevenly distributed. Off the main lines of trans- 
portation the towns are still ill-built and unprogressive, 
and the greater part of the area of the South is no farther 
along than states like Illinois and Minnesota were in the 
late sixties. 

It is, however, a ticklish thing to make these compari- 
.242 



4 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

sons, because many Southerners, and particularly Southern 
newspapers, consider ^t an attack upon the South to inti- 
mate that it is still much improvable. As the Macon Tele- 
graph said a few months ago : " After all what does it 
matter that a Harvard professor should consider us lazy 
and not even excuse us on the ground that we are victims 
of the hookworm? We still have the right to go on ex- 
panding the figures relating to our remarkable industrial 
upbuilding, until we have driven New England out of the 
business of cotton manufacturing." 

The best measure of comparative wealth would be a 
statistical statement of accumulations. On this subject 
there are many wild guesses. The Manufacturers' Record 
in January, 1907, makes claims for the South which de- 
serve especial examination : '^ England's wealth, according 
to the London Express, is increasing at the rate of $7,000,- 
000 a week. That is less than one seventh of the rate of 
the increase of wealth in the South. The increase in the 
true value of Southern wealth in the past twelve months was 
$2,690,000,000, or about $7,300,000 for every day in the 
year, including Sundays and holidays. Not only is the 
speed of increase in the South so much greater than that 
in England, but the South possesses resources, agricul- 
tural and mineral, that make certain in the future even a 
much greater rate of increase than England." 

Except poor old poverty-stricken New England, all 
the world will welcome this prodigious accretion of wealth. 
Think how many opera tickets you might buy for two and 
a half billions of dollars ! The only attempt at exact fig- 
ures of our national wealth is the estimate of the Sta- 
tistical Abstract, published about every four years, and not 
based on any exact figures. Such as it is, it is relied upon 
by the Southern writers ; and it sets forth that in the four 

243 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

years from 1900 to 1904 the total national wealth in- 
creased by less than 20 billions, an average of 5 billions 
a year; it is hardly likely that a third of the population, 
which in other respects is below the Northwest, was con- 
tributing more than half this annual gain. The only 
ground for the assertion seems to be an alleged increase 
in the Southern tax valuation from 7 billions in 1906 to 
8 billions in 1907; assuming that the average proportion 
of valuation to actual value is forty per cent, you have 
your two billions and a half. 

The first comment on this statement, which is selected 
as typical of the broad claims which float through the 
Southern press, is that the figures furnished the World 
Almanac for 1908 by the state authorities show that the 
Southern valuations in 1906 were 7,813 millions, and in 
1907, 8,474 millions; so that the increase of assessments 
is 650 millions instead of 1,000 millions. In the second 
place, the estimated true value by the Statistical Abstract 
in 1904 was about 20 billions for the whole South; and on 
a basis of comparison of the valuations of 1904 and 1907, 
the increase in the whole three years would be at best only 
two and a half billions. In the next place, two and a half 
billions a year means that every man, woman, and child, 
black and white, is on the average laying up a hundred 
dollars, which is an amazing rate of saving. 

Having thus proven that the material progress of the 
South is exaggerated, the next logical step is to show that 
perhaps it has foundation, inasmuch as the equivalent 28,- 
000,000 people in the Northwest in 1905 are gaining 
wealth still more rapidly, having increased their estimated 
"true value" from 44 billions in 1904 to at least 50 bil- 
lions in 1907. The South, which supposes itself to be get- 
ing rich faster than any other part of the globe, has in the 

244 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

last few years actually added less to its wealth than a simi- 
lar Northwest agricultural region. In the year 1906-7, 
while the South added 650 millions to its tax duplicate, 
the North added 850 millions. If, as may be the case, the 
650 millions of valuation meant 1,700 millions of new 
wealth, the Northwest was adding at least 2,300 mil- 
lions. 

In all this array of figures there is no criticism of the 
South, no denial that it is more prosperous than it has 
ever been before; no desire to minimize its splendid 
achievements which are helping on the solution of the race 
problem; but it is essential that the Southern people should 
measure themselves squarely with their neighbors. The 
single state of New York, with less than a fifth the pop- 
ulation of the South, has as much property as the whole 
South (leaving out Missouri), and adds every year to its 
wealth as much as is added by the whole South (leaving 
out Texas). The South is really at about the same place 
where the Northwest was thirty years ago; it is develop- 
ing its latent resources; building its cities; perfecting its 
communications; starting new industries; and in much 
less than thirty years it will come to the point that the 
Northwest has now reached; but that section is still driv- 
ing ahead more rapidly, and thirty years hence may be 
proportionately richer than it is to-day. If the South is 
saving four millions a day, the Northwest is saving five 
millions; and the Middle and New England states, the 
other third of the country, are saving eight or ten millions 
a day. If the South is to range up alongside the North- 
west, to say nothing of the Northe'ast, it must increase its 
production still faster, and the only way to accomplish that 
purpose is by improving the average industry, thrift, and 
output of its people. 

245 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 



///. Comparative Efficiency of White Populations 
North and South 

Some Southern statisticians, while admitting these in- 
dubitable figures, contend that the South is improving at 
a much more rapid rate, and hence must in no long time 
overtake the North; but it must be remembered that in 
most of these fields of comparison the North not only 
shows from two to two and a half times the output, but 
that its annual or decennial increase is absolutely larger 
than in the South ; that is, that the annual amount which 
the South must add to its present output, in order to catch 
up with the North, is larger than it was a year ago, or 
at any previous time. A conventional explanation of this 
state of things is that the Negroes constitute a large part 
of the Southern working force, and are much below the 
average of Americans in their productive output; but 
when comparisons are made between similar aggregations 
of white population, results are not very different. If 
the whole South (including the District of Columbia) 
be compared, not with a block of about 28,000,000 
Northern people, but with a block of about 18,000,- 
000 white people corresponding to the 17,900,000 Whites 
in the South (both figures for 1900), the results are 
still startling; although the South has all the advan- 
tage of the labor and production of 8,000,000 Negroes be- 
sides the Whites. The debts of the Southern communities 
in 1902 were 374 million dollars; of the Northern, 301 
millions. The total taxes raised in 1902 were: South, 116 
millions; North, 202 millions. The estimated Southern 
wealth in 1900 was 16.7 billions; in 1904, 19.8 billions, 
an increase of 3.1 billions; in the North the corresponding 

246 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

figures are 25.8 billions and 31.4 billions, an increase of 
5.6 billions. The Southern assessed valuation of 1907 was 
8.5 billions, of the Northern group 10.7 billions. 

What makes these differences? It certainly is not be- 
cause the South is deficient in natural resources, in fer- 
tility, in climate, in access to the world's markets, in the 
enterprise of its business men. What is the reason for 
this discrepancy between the resources and the output of 
the South? Some of the Southern observers insist that 
the North is made rich through its manufactures. In or- 
der to eliminate that condition the comparisons in this 
chapter are all with Western and Northwestern states 
(Vermont being included simply to equalize the num- 
bers) ; some of these states, as the Dakotas and Oregon, 
are very similar in their conditions to the purely agricul- 
tural and timber states of the South; in other states, such 
as Indiana and Wisconsin, there are large manufactures, 
which, however, are no more significant in proportion than 
those of Maryland and Missouri. The Northwestern 
states have more manufactures than the Southern, but they 
have more of everything, which indicates industry and 
prosperity. The obvious reason is that laborers in the 
South, both white and colored, are inferior in average 
productive power to Northern laborers; and the obvious 
remedy is to use every effort to bring up the intelligence, 
and the value to the community of every element of the 
population. 

While the proof sheets of the foregoing chapter are 
passing through their revision there appears in Colliers 
Weekly for January 22, 1910, an article by Clark Howell 
of the Atlanta Constitution who makes, in italics, the 
statement that '' the trend of Southern development is 
incomparably in advance of that of any other section of 

247 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

tlie continent." The opportunity to apply the cold bath 
of statistics to such torrid statements can still be taken, 
by adding to the tables in the Appendix some figures for 
1907 and 1908, and even 1909, together with some gen- 
eralizations based on figures not included in the tables. 
For example, the figures for public school education in 
1907 show for the ten seceding states 78,000 teachers 
against 153,000 in the corresponding Northern group; 
school property to the value of 19 millions as against 41 
millions; annual revenue of 24 millions as against 90 
millions. The rich state of Texas, with 18,000 teachers, 
is balanced by the Pacific group with 28,000; its school 
property of 15 millions by 64 millions; its annual ex- 
penditure of 7 millions by 25 millions. Even the richer 
border state group of five communities, and an average 
daily attendance of a million school children, has school 
property of 48 millions against 86 millions in the cor- 
responding Northwestern states; and the school revenue 
of 21 millions must be placed against the revenue in the 
corresponding group of 38 millions. 

The assessed valuations of the states, as reported to 
the World Almanac for 1910, are as follows: the whole 
South in 1909 was assessed on 10,051 millions — a gain of 
2,200 millions in three years; in the equal Northwestern 
group it was 19,884 millions — a gain in three years of 
7,000 millions (out of which perhaps 2,500 millions should 
be deducted, on account of a bookkeeping increase in the 
assessments in Kansas and Colorado). The cotton crop 
of 1908 sold for 675 millions and the corn crop of the 
North for 886 millions. The railroads in the South 
in 1908 totaled 71,790 miles and in the Northwestern 
group 123,332 miles. The South "has just harvested a 
billion-dollar cotton crop " says Clark Howell, and he pre- 

248 



COMPARATIVE WEALTH 

diets twenty-cent cotton. The actual crop for 1909 was 
probably less than 11 million bales, and at the average 
price for the season of about 14 cents, it sold for something 
like 770 million dollars. The corn and wheat crops of the 
whole North (not the equivalent group) sold in the same 
year for 2,091 million dollars. 

No good can result to anybody either from belittling 
or exaggerating the productivity of the South. That sec- 
tion is progressing, and the more it progresses the less 
become its difficulties of race and labor problems, the 
greater its connection with neighboring states, the larger 
the advantage to the whole nation. Still, on any basis 
of comparison with the least wealthy states and sections 
of the North — whether it be made between the total popu- 
lation of equivalent groups or between the white popu- 
lations only, leaving out of account the productivity of 
the Negroes, the South is below the national standard of 
wealth and progress; it grows constantly in accumulations 
and in productivity, but its yearly additions are less than 
those of the Northwestern states, and much less than those 
of the Northeastern states. 



CHAPTER XVIII 



MAKING COTTON 



THE South holds a call upon the world^s gold to the 
extent of $450,000,000 to $500,000,000 for the cot- 
ton which it will this year furnish to Europe. . . . 
This money, whether paid in actual gold or in other ways, 
will so strengthen the financial situation, not only of the 
South, but of New York and the country at large, as to 
make the South the saving power in American financial 
interests. No other crop on earth is of such far-reaching 
importance to any other great country as cotton is to the 
United States.'' 

This extract from the Manufacturers' Record is a 
somewhat grandiloquent statement of the conviction of the 
South that it possesses a magnificent cotton monopoly 
which no other part of the world can ever rival ; that with 
proper foresight and with courage, the South may corner 
the world's market in the staple, and fix a price which 
will insure prosperity. In a country full of natural re- 
sources of many kinds, with a soil on which corn may be 
grown almost as good as in Indiana, where cattle can be 
raised and dairies may be established, the chief aim and 
object of life is to '^ make cotton." The talk of small farm- 
ers is cotton; every country merchant of any standing is 
a cotton buyer; and most of the large wholesale houses 
and banks are interested in cotton. 

In all the large cities and some of the small ones are 
250 



MAKING COTTON 

cotton exchanges at which are posted on immense black- 
boards the day's data for " Eeceipts at Ports/' " Overland 
to Mills and Canada/' " Current Stock/' " Southern Mill 
Takings/' "Total in Sight to Date/' "World's Possible 
Supply/' and so on. The federal Census Bureau pub- 
lishes from time to time estimates of the acreage and con- 
dition of cotton, which so affect the markets that great 
efforts have sometimes been made to bribe the officials to 
reveal the figures before they are published. The Census 
Office issues periodical reports showing the number of 
bales of cotton ginned throughout the South. 

This is the more remarkable because cotton is not the 
principal product of the South, nor even the major crop 
of the rural sections; but the size and public handling 
of the crop carry away men's imagination. Timber, tur- 
pentine, mining, and iron making, taken together, produce 
a larger annual value than cotton. The total value of all 
other crops in 1907 was $758,000,000, which was about 
$90,000,000 more than the value of the cotton crop. The 
corn alone was over $485,000,000, or over two thirds the 
value of the cotton. Hay ($92,000,000), wheat, tobacco, 
oats, and potatoes make up $272,000,000 more. Though 
the Lower South grew only 9,000,000 bushels of wheat, 
rice, cultivated on rather a small scale in South Carolina, 
is a crop of growing importance in Louisiana and Texas. 
The South raises no sugar beets, little flaxseed, and not 
a twentieth of the wool; but the sugar and molasses are 
worth nearly $20,000,000. Trucking or the raising of vege- 
tables, chiefly for the Northern market, is said to employ 
700,000 freight cars in the season. The South has also 
about 15,000,000 cattle, 6,000,000 sheep, and 15,000,000 
pigs, all of which are independent of cotton except that 
to some degree cotton seed is the food for stock. 
17 251 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

When all has been said, however, the typical Southern 
industry is cotton, upon the raising of which certainly 
nearly half of the population is concentrated, and it con- 
stitutes about a fourth of the whole annual product 
of the South. The field of the cotton industry extends 
from the foot of the mountains to the Atlantic and Gulf 
Coasts; and the Southern social problem is to a very large 
degree the problem of cotton raising under a system by 
which one race includes practically all the masters, and 
the other furnishes almost all the laborers for hire. 

The history of cotton is in itself romantic. In 1790, 
about 4,000 bales were raised; in 1800, 150,000; in 1820, 
600,000; in 1840, over 2,000,000. In 1860 there was a 
tremendous crop of nearly 5,000,000 bales, a figure not 
reached again until 1879. In 1904 the crop was 13,700,- 
000 bales — an amount not equaled since. The price of 
cotton has of late ruled much lower than in the first half 
of the century, when it sometimes ran up as high as 30 
cents a pound. The 1860 crop brought about 11 cents. 
In 1898 the average price was about 6 cents, and some 
cotton sold as low as 3 cents, but the enormous crop of 
1904 brought about 12 cents, and it has ruled higher since. 
In 1908 the slackening of the world's demand caused the 
price to drop, but it has risen again to the highest point 
for thirty years. 

The significance of the cotton crop is to be calculated 
not by the Liverpool market, but by its remarkable effect 
on the life of the South. One reason for its importance 
is that it can be grown on a great variety of land. Most 
of the best American long staple, the Sea Island, comes 
from a limited area off the coast of South Carolina and 
Georgia, in which a seed trust has been formed by the 
local planters to prevent anybody outside their narrow 

252 



MAKING COTTON 

limits from raising that grade; for if the seed is renewed 
every few years, the fiber can be profitably raised on land 
now covered by the piney woods. Another variety of the 
long staple, the Floradora, is raised inland. The river 
bottoms and deltas of the numerous streams flowing into 
the Gulf of Mexico are a rich field for cotton, especially 
along the Mississippi river; but the Black Belt of the 
interior of Georgia and Alabama is almost equally pro- 
ductive; and the piney woods district and considerable 
parts of the uplands may be brought under cotton culti- 
vation. 

Northerners do not understand the significance of the 
fertilizer in cotton culture. George Washington was one 
of the few planters of his time who urged his people to 
restore the vitality of their land as fast as they took it 
out; but rare was the planter up to the Civil War who 
raised cattle, and the imported guano from the rocky 
islets of the Gulf and Pacific was little used. Then in 
the seventies discoveries were made of phosphate rocks 
in the estuaries of the Carolina rivers ; and later, inland 
deposits in Tennessee. From these, with some admixture 
of imported materials, are made commercial fertilizers 
which have become indispensable to a large number of the 
cotton farmers, so that they are now spending 20 millions 
a year on that alone, every dollar of which is expected to 
add at least a dollar and a half to the value of the crop. 

The word "plantation" has come to have a special 
meaning in Northern ears. It brings to the mind the 
great colonnaded mansion house with trim whitewashed 
negro quarters grouped about it, the pickaninnies running 
to open the gate for the four-in-hand bringing the happy 
guests, while back in the cotton field the overseer rides to 
and fro cracking his blacksnake whip. That kind of plan- 

253 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

tation is not altogether a myth. For instance, at Her- 
mitage, Just outside of Savannah, you see a brick mansion 
of a few large rooms, built a hundred years ago, sur- 
rounded by attractive sunken gardens, and one of the most 
superb groves of live oaks in the South; and near it are 
the original little brick slave cabins of one room and a 
chimney. 

That kind of elaborate place was rare; in most cases 
the ante-bellum planter's house was a modest building, 
and nowadays very few large planters live regularly on 
the plantation. If the place is profitable enough, the fam- 
ily lives in the nearest town or city; if it is unprofitable, 
sooner or later the banks get it and the family goes down ; 
even where the old house is preserved, it is likely to be 
turned over to the manager, or becomes a nest for the col- 
ored people. Inasmuch as cotton raising is an industrial 
enterprise, plantations are apt to change hands, or the 
owners may put in new managers ; so that the ante-bellum 
feeling of personal relation between the owner and the 
field hand plays little part in modern cotton making. 

The modern plantation can more easily be described 
than analyzed; the term is elastic; a young man will tell 
you that he has " bought a plantation " which upon in- 
quiry comes down to a little place of less than a hundred 
acres with two houses. The distinction between a " farm " 
and a " plantation " seems to be that the latter term is 
applied to a place on which there is a body of laborers 
(almost universally Negroes) managed, with very few ex- 
ceptions, by white men and devoted principally to one crop. 

Individual plantation holdings vary in size from the 
thirty thousand acres of Bell, the central Alabama planter, 
down to fifty acres. Many large owners have scattered 
plantations, sometimes as many as twenty or thirty, each 

254 



MAKING COTTON 

carried on by itself ; or two or three adjacent groups under 
one manager. You are informed that the X brothers 
" own thirty-three plantations/' which probably means 
thirty-three different large farms, ranging from two hun- 
dred to two thousand acres each. Three to five thousand 
acres of land under cultivation is as large a body of land 
as seems advantageous to handle together. 

A fair example of the large plantation in the best cot- 
ton lands is the estate managed by Mr. Dayton near Jones- 
ville, La., on the Tensas and Little rivers. It is an expanse 
of that incredibly rich land, of which there are millions of 
acres in this enormous delta, land which has in many places 
produced fifty to seventy-five successive crops of cotton 
without an ounce of fertilizer. Between the rivers, which 
are fenced off by levees, lie the fields, originally all wooded, 
but in these old plantations even the roots have disappeared 
from the open fields, although wherever the plantation is 
enlarged the woods have to be cleared, and the gaunt and 
fire-scarred dead trunks mark the progress of cultivation. 

The negro houses stand in the middle of the field; for 
on modern plantations it is very rare to gather the hands 
in quarters near the great house; their cabins are distrib- 
uted all over the estate. On the main road is a manager's 
house, distinctly better than any of the negro cabins. 
Near by a white family is moving in where a black family 
has moved out, for fliis plantation (though the thing is 
uncommon) has a few white hands working alongside the 
Negroes. In this free open, in the breadth of the fields 
and the width of the turbid streams, alongside the endless 
procession of scenic forests in the background, one forgets 
the long hot days of toil, the scanty living, the ignorance 
and debasement. It may all be as sordid as the mines 
or the iron works, but it is in pure air. These thousands 

255 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

of broad acres with their mealy brown soil bearing the 
" cotton-weed " (the common name for the stalk after tlie 
cotton is picked) are a type of the lowland South from 
Texas to North Carolina. 

A plantation of somewhat different type is " Sunny 
Side '^ in Arkansas, nearly opposite the city of Greenville, 
Miss. " Sunny Side " is supposed by some people to be 
extravagantly conducted because there are three or four 
good managers' houses on the estate, and because there is 
twenty-three miles of light railway track. Considering 
that the plantation runs eight and a half miles along the 
river, and that all its products and supplies would other- 
wise need to be hauled, there is a reason for the railroad, 
whose one little locomotive fetches and carries like a well- 
trained dog; and it is a special privilege of all the people 
employed on the estate and of visitors to ride back and 
forth as their occasions require. " Sunny Side," with an 
adjacent estate under the same management, comprises 
about 12,000 acres, of which 4,700 acres, including broad 
hay lands and extensive corn fields, are under cultivation, 
and the remainder is in timber; considerable areas have 
been cleared in recent years. The annual cotton crop is 
about 2,500 bales. As on most plantations, the houses of the 
hands are distributed so that nobody has far to go to his 
work. Twenty to thirty acres is commonly assigned to 
a family; more to a large family, and the lands rented at 
from $6 to $8 an acre, according to quality, with the usual 
plantation privileges of firewood, a house, and pasture for 
draft animals. 

Here comes in one of the most important complications 
in cotton culture. Northern wheat is usually grown by 
farmers tilling moderate-sized farms, either as owners or 
as money renters; a third or more of the cotton is raised 

256 



MAKING COTTON 

in the same way by farmers or small planters who till for 
themselves or employ a few families of hands; and like 
the wheat farmers they look on the land as a tool. On 
the large plantations, where perhaps as many as a thou- 
sand people are busied on the crop, the manager looks 
upon the laborer simply as an element of production; you 
must have seed, rain, and the niggers in order to get a 
crop. Even the most kind-hearted and conscientious 
plantation owner cannot avoid this feeling that the labor- 
ers are, like the live-stock, a part of the implements; he 
houses them, and if humane and far-sighted, he houses them 
better than the mules ; he " furnishes them " — that is, he 
agrees to feed them and allow them necessities while the 
crop is making. All this is practically the factory system, 
with the unfavorable addition that the average plantation 
hand comes near the category of unskilled labor. A Negro 
brought up on one plantation can do just as well in a 
plantation ten or a thousand miles away; and there is no 
subdivision of labor except for the few necessary mechan- 
ics. That is, cotton planting on a large plantation is 
an industrial enterprise requiring considerable capital, 
trained managers, and a large plant of buildings, tools, 
animals and Negroes. 

A characteristic of cotton culture is that it requires 
attention and keeps the hands busy during the greater 
part of the year. The first process is to break the ground, 
which begins as early as January 1st, then about March 
or April the seed is dropped in long rows, and during the 
seeding season the rural schools are likely to stop so as to 
give the children the opportunity to help. In the seed 
there is great room for improvement; as yet the Southern 
agricultural colleges seem to have made less impression 
on the cotton grower than their brethren in the North- 

357 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

western states have made on the corn and wheat farming, 
for some large and otherwise intelligent planters make 
very little effort to select their seed. 

When the cotton is once up, it needs the most patient 
care, for it must be weeded and thinned and watched, 
and is gone over time after time. The " riders " or as- 
sistant managers are in the saddle all day long, and a 
prudent manager casts his eye on every plot of cultivated 
ground on his plantation every day; for it is easy to 
"get into the grass," and all but the best of the hands 
need to be kept moving. 

Then comes the picking of the cotton, which lasts from 
August into February. It is a planter's maxim that no 
negro family can pick the cotton that it can raise, and 
extra help has to be found. Here is one of the large items 
of expense in raising cotton, for the fields have to be gone 
over two, three, and sometimes four times, inasmuch as 
the cotton does not all mature at the same time, and if 
it did, no machine has ever been invented which is practical 
for picking cotton. It is hand work to the end of the year. 
There is a plantation saying that it takes thirteen months 
to make a cotton crop, and it is true that plowing for 
the next crop begins on some parts of the plantation before 
the last of the two or three pickings is completed on other 
parts. When picked, the cotton goes into little storehouses or 
into the cabins, until enough accumulates to keep the gin 
busy. 

Everybody in the great cotton districts talks about 
" A bale to the acre " as a reasonable yield, but one of the 
richest counties of Mississippi averages only half a bale, 
and the whole South averages about a third of a bale. 
What is a bale ? The "seed cotton," so called, as it comes 
from the field, has the brown seeds in the midst of the 

258 



MAKING COTTON 

fiber, and the first process is to gin it — ^that is to take out 
the seed, and at the same time to make it into the standard 
package for handling. This requires machinery, originally 
invented by that ingenious Yankee schoolmaster, Eli Whit- 
ney. There are about 38,000 of these ginneries, some hav- 
ing one poor little old gin, others five or six of the latest 
machines side by side, with air suction and other labor- 
saving devices. It is an interesting sight to see the fluffy 
stuff wafted up into the gin with its row of saw-teeth, 
and then blown to the press, where a plunger comes down 
time after time until the man who runs it judges that 
about five hundred pounds have accumulated ; then another 
plunger comes up from below; the rectangular mass thus 
formed is enveloped in rough sacking and fastened with 
iron cotton ties. The completed bale is then turned out, 
weighed, numbered, stamped, and recorded; and becomes 
one of the thirteen million units of the year's crop; but 
the number identifies it, and any particular bale of cotton 
may be traced back to the plantation from which it came 
and even to the negro family that raised it. Sea Island cot- 
ton has a much woodier plant, and the seed cotton con- 
tains less lint and more numerous although smaller seeds; 
hence it requires special picking, a special gin, cannot be 
so compressed, and must be much more carefully bagged. 
Sea Island cotton at 23 cents a pound is thought to be no 
more profitable than the short staple at less than half the 
price. 

About 1897 a great effort was made to substitute a 
round bale, weighing about half as much as the standard 
bale, and in 1902 the output reached nearly a million. It 
is still a question whether that package is not an improve- 
ment, but the machinery was more expensive, complaints 
were made that the round bale was harder to stow for 

259 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

export; the railroad companies refused to give any advan- 
tage in freight rates; and the compressor companies, who 
are closely linked in with the railroads, were opposed to it 
altogether; and the round bale has almost disappeared 
from the South. Only two per cent of the cotton is thus 
baled. 

One of the things remarked by Duke Bernhard of Saxe 
Weimar, when he visited the South in 1824, was that the 
people seemed unaware that there was any value in cotton 
seed. Some planters put it on the field as a fertilizer, 
where it has some value; others threw it away. During 
the last twenty years, however, the cotton seed has become 
a great factor in the production. About one third the 
weight of the seed cotton is seed, and its value is over one 
tenth that of the baled cotton. In the high cotton year of 
1906 the cotton seed was thought to be worth nearly 
ninety millions. Immense quantities go to the oil mills 
which are scattered through the South. Besides the clear 
oil they produce oil cake which is used as a food for ani- 
mals or a fertilizer. The seed practically adds something 
more than a cent a pound to the value of the product. 



CHAPTER XIX 

COTTON HANDS 

SO far cotton cultivation has been considered as though 
it were a crop which came of itself, like the rubber 
of the Brazilian forests, but during a whole century 
the cultivation of cotton has had a direct influence on the 
labor system and the whole social organization of the 
South. Such close relations sometimes exist in other com- 
modities ; for instance, the election of President McKinley, 
in 1896, seems to have been determined by a sudden rise in 
the price of wheat ; but cotton is socially and politically im- 
portant every year, because upon it the greater part of the 
negro labor is employed, and to it a large portion of the 
white management and capital is devoted. 

Furthermore, the conditions of the old slavery times 
are more nearly reproduced in the cotton field than any- 
where else in the South. The old idea that the normal 
function of the African race is field labor is still vital ; and 
the crude and unskilled mass of Negroes still find employ- 
ment in which they succeed tolerably well. As in slavery 
times, the cotton hands are more fixed in their locality than 
in other pursuits; they are less ambitious to move about, 
and find their way more close hedged in if they try to 
go elsewhere. The relation of the white man as task- 
master to the Negro as a deferential class is still 
distinctly maintained; while the system of advances 

261 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

to laborers resembles the old methods of feeding the 
hands. 

The Negro is not the sole cotton maker ; fully one third 
of the cotton in the South is never touched by a black 
hand, being raised by small white farmers both in the low- 
lands and in the hill regions, who produce one, two, or 
more bales a year and depend upon that crop to pay their 
store bills. Something like one sixth of the crop is raised 
by independent negro land owners or renters working for 
themselves; this leaves nearly or quite one half the crop 
to negro labor under the superintendence of white owners 
or managers. 

Even where the Negro is employed on wages, he looks 
on himself as part of the concern and expects due consid- 
eration in return for what Stone calls the " proprietary 
interest he feels in the plantation at large, his sense of 
being part and parcel of a large plantation. Then, too, 
there is his never-failing assurance of ability to pay his 
account, no matter how large, by his labor, when it is not 
too wet or too cold, his respect, and his implicit and gen- 
erally cheerful obedience." 

Inasmuch as more than half the Negroes are raising cot- 
ton, and most of the others are working on farms, it is 
important to know what kind of laborers they make. It is 
the opinion of their greatest leader, Booker Washington, 
that the best place for the Negro is in the rural South, 
and that he is not fitted for the strife of the great cities 
South or North. Is he perfectly fitted for any service ? Is 
it true, as one of the employers of Negroes alleges, that 
"their actions have no logical or reasonable basis, that 
they are notional and whimsical, and that they are con- 
trolled far more by their fancies than by their common 
sense ? " 

263 



COTTON HANDS 

In cotton culture there is little to elevate a man. One 
of the numerous errors flying about is that the slave in 
the cotton fields was a skilled laborer, and that there is 
intellectual training in planting, weeding, and picking. 
The owner or renter must of course accustom his mind to 
consider the important questions of the times of plow- 
ing and seeding, and he must submit to the anxiety which 
besets the farmer all over the world ; but cotton culture is 
a monotonous thing, the handling of the few tools is at 
best a matter of dexterity, and the only man who gets an 
intellectual training out of it is the manager. When cot- 
ton is high, a plantation is a more or less speculative in- 
vestment, and many people who save money put it into 
land and hire a manager. Cotton broking and banking 
firms sometimes carry on plantations of their own. City 
bankers and heavy men get plantations on mortgage, or by 
purchase ; and banks sometimes own too much of this kind 
of property. 

Of course many planters run their own plantations; 
but on all large estates, and many small ones, there is a 
manager who is virtually the old overseer over again. 
Commonly he is a good specimen of the lower class of the 
white population ; in a very few cases he is a Negro. Suc- 
cessful managers command a salary as high as $3,000 a 
year or more, and have some opportunity to plant on their 
own account; business sense such a man must have, but 
above all he must be able to "handle niggers," an art in 
which, by common consent, most Northern owners of cot- 
ton land are wanting. On a large plantation there will 
also be one or more assistant managers, commonly called 
" riders " ; a bookkeeper, who may be an important func- 
tionary; a plantation doctor, sometimes on contract, some- 
times taking patients as they come and charging their 

263 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

bills on the books of the plantation. On one plantation 
employing a hundred and thirty Italian families there is^ 
even a plantation priest. 

The manager subdivides the estate into plots, or 
" plows " — ^you hear the expression " he has a fifteen-plow 
farm '^ — of from ten to thirty-five acres, according to the 
number of working hands in the squad that takes it. A 
" one-mule farm " is about thirty acres. He settles what 
crop shall be grown; some insist that part of the acreage 
be planted in corn, others raise all the corn for the estate 
on land worked by day hands. The secret of success is 
unceasing watchfulness of all the details, and especially 
of the labor of the hands. 

Outside of the administrative force and their families 
there are commonly no white people on a cotton planta- 
tion. The occasional white hands make the same kind of 
contracts, live in the same houses, and accept the same con- 
ditions as the Negroes ; but their number is small and they 
are likely to drift out either into cotton mills or into saw- 
mill and timber work. The foreign agricultural laborers, 
as has been shown in the chapter on immigration, are few 
in number. The Germans, the so-called Austrians, the few 
Bulgarians, Greeks, Syrians, and Italians, all taken to- 
gether, are probably less than 10,000, and there seems little 
reason to suppose that their number will soon increase. 
The main source of plantation labor has always been the 
Negroes who furnish about two million workers on other 
people's land, and with their families make up more than 
half of all the Negroes in the United States. 

With their families — for the unit on the plantation is 
not a hand, but a family, or where three or four unmar- 
ried men or unmarried women work together, a gang. This 
practice, combined with the child labor in cotton mills, 

264 



COTTON" HANDS 

accounts for the large number of persons under fifteen 
years old — more than half the boys in some states — who 
are employed in gainful occupations. This is one of the 
most striking divergences from any kind of Northern farm- 
ing where plenty of farmers' wives ride the mowing ma- 
chine, and farmers' sisters pick fruit, and farmers' chil- 
dren drop potatoes, where foreign women often work in 
garden patches, but where people do not habitually employ 
women and children at heavy field labor. 

The best Negroes, unless they own land of their own, 
seek the form of contract most advantageous to themselves, 
paying either a money rent of two dollars to eight dol- 
lars an acre, or an equivalent cotton rent. It is generally 
believed that the renters are the people most likely to save 
money and buy property for themselves. In Dunleith, 
Mississippi, a crew of seven people came in with a hundred 
dollars' worth of property, and three years later went away 
with more than a thousand dollars' worth of accumulated 
stock, tools and personal property. A renter must have 
animals of his own, and is obliged to feed them and to 
keep up his tools. Some planters find that renters leave 
them just as they are doing well, and that the land is 
skinned by them. In general, however, a Negro who has 
the necessary mules can always find a chance to rent land. 

The share hand or cropper is next in point of thrift; 
the planter furnishes him house, wood, seed, animals, and 
implements; and at the end of the year the value of the 
crop is divided between owner and tenant, either half and 
half or "three fifths and four fifths," which means that 
the Negro gets three fifths of the cotton and four fifths of 
the corn. 

A third class is the wage hands^ who in general have 
not the ability to rent land on any terms; they receive a 

265 



THE SOUTHER]^ SOUTH 

house and fuel, and wages, from fifteen dollars a month up 
to a dollar a day. Where steady wage hands can be found, 
this is considered the best arrangement for the planter. 

Renters and croppers may be supplemented by extra 
work, paid for by them, or charged to them. If they get 
into a tight place with their cotton, the manager sends 
wage hands to their aid, and at picking time all available 
help of all ages is scraped together and sent out according 
to the needs of the plantation. Of course, a renter or a 
" cropper " may allow members of his family to work for 
others, if he cannot keep them busy. On some plantations 
tenants pay on an average nearly a hundred dollars a year 
for this extra help. 

During the five years from 1903 to 1907 there was a 
phenomenal demand for cotton hands, and planters were 
eager to get anybody that looked like work; hence the 
Negro had the agreeable sensation of seeing people compete 
for him. Of course, if, at the " change of the year " (Jan- 
uary 1st), the Negro moves to one planter, he moves away 
from another, and the man thus left behind has gloomy 
view of the fickleness and instability of the negro race. 
One of the best managed plantations in the Delta of Missis- 
sippi, supposed to be very profitable, has seen such a shift 
that at the end of five years hardly one of the original 
hands was on the place. Other planters in that region 
equally successful in making money say that they have 
little or no trouble with negro families moving, and there 
seems no good reason to believe that they are more restless 
than any other laborers. It is, of course, highly discour- 
aging for a planter who has made every effort by improved 
houses, just treatment and clear accounts, to satisfy his 
people, to see them slipping away to neighbors who are 
notoriously hard, unjust, and shifty. While he remains on 

266 



COTTON HAXDS 

a plantation, the Negro feels, says a planter, "the cer- 
tainty, in his own mind, that he himself is necessary to its 
success/^ 

It is this dissatisfaction with the negro laborer which 
has led to the efforts, described above, to bring in foreigners, 
efforts which have been so far quite unsuccessful, first, be- 
cause the number of people that could be induced to come 
is too small to affect the South, and secondly, because few 
of them mean to remain as permanent day laborers. Since 
the South seems better fitted than any other part of the 
earth for the cultivation of cotton, since at any price above 
six cents a pound there is some profit in the business, and 
at the prices prevailing during the last five years a large 
profit, it seems certain that the Negro will be steadily de- 
sired as a cotton hand; and the question comes down to 
that suggested by Nicholas Worth : " There ought to be a 
thousand schools, it seemed to me, that should have the 
aim of Hampton. Else how could the negroes — even a 
small percentage of them — ever be touched by any train- 
ing at all? And if they were not to be trained in a way 
that would make the cotton fields cleaner and more pro- 
ductive, how should our upbuilding go on? For it must 
never be forgotten that the very basis of civilization here 
is always to be found in cotton." 

If the master sometimes is dissatisfied with the laborer, 
the Negro in his turn has his own complaints, which 
Booker Washington has summed up as follows : " Poor 
dwelling-houses, loss of earnings each year because of un- 
scrupulous employers, high-priced provisions, poor school- 
houses, short school terms, poor school-teachers, bad treat- 
ment generally, lynchings and whitecapping, fear of the 
practice of peonage, a general lack of police protection, and 
want of encouragement." In this list several of the items 
18 267 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

refer to the plantation system of accounts, which cannot be 
understood without some explanation of the advance sys- 
tem. 

In slavery times plantation owners got into the 
habit of spending their crop before it was grown, and that 
is still the practice of by far the greater number of cot- 
ton planters and farmers, large and small. In flush times 
agents of large cotton brokers and wholesale establishments 
literally press check books into the hands of planters and 
invite them to use credit or cash to their hearts' content. 
There is some justification in the system as applied to 
cotton culture, which over large areas is the only sale crop ; 
and under which (for the same system runs down to the 
very bottom) the planters themselves are in the habit of 
making advances to their tenants and hands. The white 
and negro land owner commonly make arrangements " to 
be furnished " by the nearest country storekeeper ; or by a 
store or bank, or white friend in the nearest city. On the 
plantation, the planter himself commonly furnishes his own 
hands, and has a store or " commissary " for that purpose. 
Neither banker nor planter expects to lose money ; both are 
subject to heavy deductions by the failure of planters and 
the departure of hands, and hence they recoup themselves 
from those who will pay. The effect is, of course, that 
when the cotton is sold and accounted for, the planter and 
his hand alike may not have any surplus to show, and be- 
gin the new year in debt. And the same round may be 
gone over again year by year during a lifetime. 

The system is enforced by lien loans, through which the 
crop is the security for the loan, and in addition it is cus- 
tomary for the small farmer to mortgage mules, tools, and 
whatever else he may have. As Stone explains : " The 
factor's method of self-protection is to take a deed of 

268 



COTTOIST HANDS 

trust on the live stock and prospective crop, and is the 
same whether the applicant be a two-mule Negro renter, or 
the white owner of a thousand acres of land, wanting ten 
thousand dollars of advances. . . . There is, however, this 
difference : the white man gets his advances in cash, avail- 
able at stated intervals, while the Negro gets the most of 
his in the shape of supplies." Many people believe that the 
whole crop lien system is an incentive to debt, that if it 
were abolished people would have to depend upon their 
character and credit; and hence a determined effort was 
made in South Carolina in 1908 to repeal the lien law out- 
right. 

The obvious defects of this system, the tendency to ex- 
travagance, the not knowing where you stand, the preven- 
tion of saving habits, are aggravated for the Negro because 
the white man keeps the books. The Negro is ac- 
customed to be charged prices which in many cases are a 
half higher than the cash price of the same article in the 
nearby stores; he knows that there will be an interest 
charge at the rate of from ten per cent to forty per cent on 
his running account, and he suspects (sometimes with 
reason) that the bookkeeping is careless or fraudulent. 
Some planters make a practice of ending the settlement of 
every account with a row, and the consequent frame of 
mind of the Negro is illustrated by a stock story. A Negro 
has been trading with a local merchant and goes to a new 
store because they offer twelve pounds of sugar for a dol- 
lar instead of ten. On his way back he passes the old 
place, where they ask him in, weigh up his sugar, and show 
him that he has actually only nine pounds instead of twelve. 
"Yes, boss, dat's so, but after all, perhaps he didn't get 
the best of it; while he was weighing out that sugar, I 
slips dis yere pair of shoes into my basket." 

269 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

The story precisely illustrates the futility of cheating 
the Negro ; for whenever he thinks his accounts are juggled,"^ 
he will see to it that his labor is no more conscientious than 
the bookkeeper's. Many of the really long-headed planters 
see that the less the relations of employer and hand are 
matters of favor, and the more they become affairs of busi- 
ness, the easier it will be to get on with their hands. Many 
of them have a fixed basis for advances, not more than 
about fifteen dollars a month for a family, and that in 
provisions only ; others keep no book accounts for such ad- 
vances, but issue coupon books of say fifteen dollars every 
month. A few pay their wage hands and give out the ad- 
vances in cash, allowing people to buy where they will. A 
very few decline to have anything to do with advances in 
any form; but inasmuch as the Negroes must eat, in such 
cases the hands usually get somebody else to furnish them. 
Some planters close up their accounts at the end of the year, 
compelling the Negroes to turn in whatever they have in 
property to close out their accounts, and then start in 
afresh. 

All these are only palliatives ; the net effect of the sys- 
tem of advances to hands is to accentuate the industrial 
character of the cotton plantation. A big plantation in 
central Alabama or the Delta of Mississippi cannot be com- 
pared with any Northern farms, nor even with the great 
ranches of California ; it is very like a coal mine back in a 
cove of the mountains of Pennsylvania; the same forlorn 
houses, the same company store, the same system of store 
orders and charges; only the coal mine sells its product 
from day to day and pays any differences in cash at the end 
of the month, while the cotton hand must wait till his 
particular bale is sold at the end of the season, before he 
can draw his profit. The Negro is therefore less likely than 

270 



COTTON HANDS 

the miner to lay up money, and is even more at the mercy 
of the company's bookkeeper. 

Here is an actual annual account of a plantation family 
in the Delta of Mississippi, two adults and one child, poor 
workers : 





Debit 




Credit 


Doctor 


$24.45 
33.00 
53.40 
60.00 
11.25 
130.50 
179.45 
11.90 
43.50 
53.50 


Cotton.... 
Cotton seed 

Debit. 


$498.57 


Mule 


91.00 


Clothing 




Rations 




Feed 


$589.57 


Rent 








Seed 




Ginning 




Cash down 


$11.38 








600.95 


$600.95 



These people got their living and sixty-six dollars in 
cash and credit during the year; but the charge for extra 
labor shows that they were shiftless and did not work out 
their own crop. On the same plantation an industrious 
family of three adults and one child earned in a year $974, 
of which $450 was net cash. 

An examination of various plantation accounts reveals 
the fact that the actual earnings of the negro hands, if 
industrious, are considerably greater than the average for 
the Pennsylvania miners, but of course the whole family 
works in the fields. The renters could do still better if 
they had money enough to carry them through the year; 
on a prosperous plantation in Arkansas, only about one 
fortieth of all the negro gangs kept off the books of the 
company and drew their earnings in cash at the end of the 

271 



THE SOUTHEEiSr SOUTH 

year, while two thirds of the Italians employed on the 
same plantation had no store accounts. In fact there is^ 
some complaint that the Italians club together and buy 
their provisions at wholesale. 

The advance system is complicated by a system of 
" Christmas Money." You hear planters bitterly cursing 
the Negroes who have demanded $25, $50, or $100 to spend 
at Christmas time, as though the money were not charged 
against the Negro to be deducted at the end of the year; 
and as though it were not so advanced in order to induce 
the Negro to make a contract with them. Many planters 
refuse to give Christmas money and yet fill up their plan- 
tation houses. It is all part of a vicious system ; the wage 
hands have to be paid somehow, though often not com- 
pletely paid up till the end of the year ; the share hands and 
renters are carried by the planter because they always have 
been carried ; and because bad planters can take advantage 
of this opportunity to squeeze their hands. The difficulty 
is one known in other lands; in Ceylon, for instance, the 
laborers on tea and rubber estates draw advances, carry 
debts which have to be assumed by a new employer, trade 
at a " caddy," which is the same thing as a commissary, 
and complain of the accounts. 

The system is just as vicious for the small land owners 
both negro and white. Most Southern states under their 
crop lien law allow the growing crop to be mortgaged for 
cash or advances, and hence any farmer has credit for 
supplies or loans up to the probable value of the crop when 
marketed. That value is variable, the advances are clogged 
with interest and overcharges, and the whole system is 
a heavy draft on the country. There are money sharks in 
the Southern country as well as in the Northern cities, and 
many scandalous transactions. One man in Alabama has 

272 



COTTON HANDS 

2,500 Negroes on his books for loans, in some cases for a 
loan of $5 with interest charges of $1.50 a month. Cases 
have been known where a Negro brought to a plantation 
his mules and stock, worked a season, and at the end saw 
all his crop of cotton taken, and his property swept up, in- 
cluding the mules, which are exempt by law. Many back 
plantations take the seed for the ginning — that is, they 
exact more than twice what the service is worth. A Negro 
has been known to borrow say $200 ; when it was not paid, 
the white lender seized on all his possessions, and without 
going through any legal formality gave him credit for 
$100, leaving the balance of the debt hanging over his 
head. A peddler has been known to insist on leaving a 
clock at the house of a poor colored woman who protested 
that she did not want a clock, could not ajfford a clock and 
would not take a clock. The man drove off, returned some 
months later, demanded payment for the clock which was 
just where he left it, never having been started, and when 
the money was not forthcoming proceeded to take away the 
woman^s chickens — ^her poor little livelihood. She ran to 
a white neighbor, who came back with her and turned the 
scoundrel out. There is first and last much of this ad- 
vantage taken of the ignorance and poverty of the Negro; 
a certain type of planter declares that he can make more 
money out of an ignorant black than out of an educated 
one. As one of the white friends of the colored race in 
the South says, the Negroes must receive at least sufficient 
education to enable them to protect themselves against 
such exaction. 

Considering the immense importance of cotton to the 
South, it is amazing how wasteful is its culture and its 
distribution. Experts say that a great part of the cost of 
fertilizers could be saved by cultivating the cow pea. 

273 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

About six per cent of the value of the fiber — a trifle of forty 
million dollars — is seriously injured by ginning. Compar- 
atively few farmers or planters select their seed, though 
several of the Southern agricultural colleges have set up 
cotton schools, and the president of the Mississippi Agri- 
cultural and Mechanical College has actually begun to hold 
farmers' institutes for the negro farmers. The cotton bale 
is probably the most careless package used for a valuable 
product. It sometimes literally drops to pieces before it 
reaches the consumer; and of course the grower, in the 
long run, loses by the poor quality or the poor packing of 
his product. The grading of cotton requires that a large 
quantity be brought together in one place, and the small 
grower gets little advantage out of improvement in his 
staple. 

What the South most needs in cotton is the improve- 
ment of the labor. As President Hardy, of the Mississippi 
Agricultural College, says : " So many of our negroes are 
directing their own work that their efficiency must be pre- 
served and increased or great injury will result to our 
whole economic system. The prosperity of our section as 
a whole is affected by the productive capacity of 
every individual in our midst. The negro's inefficiency is 
a great financial drain on the South, and I believe this 
farmers' institute work for the negro is the beginning of 
a permanent policy that will be very far-reaching in its 
results. There is no doubt that this is one of the ways 
of increasing the cotton production of the country that has 
heretofore received very little attention." 

It remains to consider the relation of the race question 
to cotton manufacture. Long before the Civil War it was 
seen that the Southern staple was being sent to foreign 
countries and to the North to be manufactured, and that 

274 



COTTON HANDS 

the South was buying back its own material in cotton 
goods ; therefore some cotton mills were constructed in the 
South. The labor in these mills seems to have been entirely 
white, but their product, which was of the coarser qualities, 
was never large enough to control the market. About 1880 
came a new era of cotton manufacture, aided first by the 
extension of the railway system, second by the develop- 
ment of water power, and third by the discovery that the 
poor whites make a tolerable mill population. Hence grew 
up a chain of flourishing factory towns, most of them on 
or near the "fall line,^' so as to take advantage of the 
water powers, and there has been a steady growth of South- 
ern manufactures. In 1887 the Southern mills worked up 
only 400,000 bales, which was one fifth of the staple used 
for manufactures in the United States. Twenty years 
later they were making up 2,400,000 bales, which was 
one half the consumption. The state of South Carolina 
alone in 1905 produced manufactures to the amount of 
$79,000,000. 

The first thing to notice in this manufacture is that the 
mill hands are still exclusively white. Several efforts have 
been made in Columbia, Charleston, and elsewhere to carry 
on cotton mills with negro labor, and a few negro capital- 
ists have built mills in which they expected to employ peo- 
ple of their own race ; but every one of these experiments 
seems to have been a failure, partly because of the igno- 
rance of the average Negro who could be drawn into the in- 
dustry, and partly because of his irregularity. The Poor 
Whites do not make by any means the best mill help, and 
their output of yards per hand is considerably less than 
that in the Northern states. The supply of white labor 
also shows signs of depletion, though Mountain Whites are 
being brought down; it is still a question whether they 

275 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

will settle in the new places, or whether after they have 
saved money they will return to their mountains. Hence 
the frantic efforts to bring in mill hands from outside the 
South. Northern hands will not accept a lower wage scale 
and do not like the social conditions. It is plain that the 
Southern cotton manufacture is entirely dependent upon 
the supply of native white labor. 

Notwithstanding the great growth of cotton manufacture 
in the South, the fine qualities are still made elsewhere; 
and the capital employed, the total wages paid, and the 
value of output are much greater in the North. The value 
of the product in South Carolina rose between 1890 and 
1905 from $10,000,000 to $50,000,000, but in the same 
period the value in Massachusetts rose from $100,000,000 
to $130,000,000. The output of cotton goods in Colum- 
bia, $5,000,000 is less than half the output of Nashua, 
New Hampshire. The New England states still fur- 
nish nearly one half the output of cotton manufactures, 
measured by value. The Northern states as a whole pay 
$65,000,000 a year for wages against $27,000,000 in the 
South; and their product is $270,000,000 against $268,- 
000,000 in the South. It is evident, therefore, that the 
scepter for cotton manufacture has not yet passed into the 
hands of the South. 

The discussion of the economic forces and tendencies of 
the South in the last three chapters may now be briefly 
recapitulated. The South is a prosperous and advancing 
region on the highway to wealth, but advancing rather more 
slowly than other agricultural sections of the country, and 
in material wealth far behind the West and farther behind 
the Middle states and New England. It will be several 
decades before the South can possibly have as much accu- 
mulation as that now in possession of the region which 

276 



COTTON HANDS 

most resembles it in the United States, the Middle West 
and Far West. Of its sources of wealth, the timber is 
temporary, mining and iron making limited in area. The 
chief employment must always be agriculture, and particu- 
larly cotton. Cotton culture on a large scale, as now car- 
ried on, is an industrial enterprise in which the laborer is 
likely to be exploited. The advance system is a curse to 
the South, inciting to extravagance and leading to dreams 
of wealth not yet created; it is especially bad for the 
Negro, who is at his best as a renter, or still more as the 
owner of land. Economically the progress of the negro 
laborer is very slow, but he is absolutely necessary to the 
welfare of the South, for no substitute can be discerned. 



CHAPTER XX 



PEONAGE 



FROM the earlier chapters on the Negroes and on the 
Cotton Hands it is plain that the Southern agricul- 
tural laborer is unsatisfactory to his employer, and 
not happy in himself; that the two races, though allied, 
are yet in disharmony. Of recent years a new or rather a 
renewed cause of race hostility has been found, because the 
great demand for labor, chiefly in the cotton fields, gives rise 
to the startling abuse of a system of forced labor, commonly 
called peonage, which at the mildest is the practice of 
thrashing a hand who misbehaves on the plantation, and 
in its farthest extent is virtually slavery. For this system 
the white race is solely acountable, inasmuch as it is the 
work of white men, sometimes under the protection of laws 
made by white legislatures, and always because of an in- 
sufficient public sentiment among white people. 

When the slaves were set free, the federal government 
was careful to protect them against a relapse into bondage. 
The Thirteenth Amendment, which went into effect in 
1865, absolutely prohibited " slavery or involuntary servi- 
tude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party 
shall have been duly convicted." In addition, in 18G7, an 
act of Congress formally prohibited " the system known as 
peonage." A further statue of 1874 declared it a crime 
" to kidnap or carry away any other person with intent 

278 



PEONAGE 

to hold him in involuntary servitude." The word " peon- 
age " comes from the Mexican system of serfdom, the prin- 
ciple of which is, that if an employee owes his master he 
must continue to serve him until that debt is paid, the 
only escape being that if another employer is willing to 
come forward and assume the debt the employee is allowed 
to transfer his obligation to the new master. In practice, 
the system amounts to vassalage, inasmuch as the debt is 
usually allowed to reach a figure which there is no hope 
of paying off. 

The term " involuntary servitude " is clear enough, and 
it is a curious fact that when the Philippine Islands were 
annexed there was a system of slavery in the Sulu Archi- 
pelago which was actually recognized by a treaty made by 
General Bates; but the federal government dropped the 
treaty, and there is no doubt that the United States 
courts would uphold any Sulu bondman who sought his 
liberty under the Thirteenth Amendment. 

In 1865 some of the Southern states passed vagrant 
laws under which Negroes were obliged to make a labor 
contract for a year, and could be compelled to carry out 
that contract; and the belief in the North that these 
statutes were virtually intended to reenslave the freedmen 
was one of the mainsprings of the Fourteenth Amendment 
and the other Reconstruction legislation. 

Inasmuch as the raising of cotton requires almost con- 
tinuous labor, it is customary to make voluntary contracts 
with both renters and wage hands running for a year, com- 
monly from the first of January; and breach of contract 
is a special grief and loss to the planter, inasmuch as if a 
Negro throws up a crop it is often impossible to find any- 
body else to finish it. Hence has grown up almost uncon- 
sciously a practice which closely resembles the Mexican 

279 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

peonage. It is unwritten law among some planters that 
nobody must give employment for the remainder of the 
year to a hand who is known to have left his crop on an- 
other plantation ; and still further, that no contract should 
be made at the beginning of the year with a family which, 
after accounting for the previous crop, is still in debt to a 
neighbor, except that the new employer may pay the old 
debt and charge it as an advance against the hand. There 
is. no where any legal sanction of this widespread practice, 
but the result is that thousands of Negroes are practically 
fastened to their plantation because nobody else in the 
neighborhood will give them emplo3rment ; and far too many 
planters therefore make it a point to keep their hands in 
debt. 

This system grew up slowly and attracted little atten- 
tion till it began to be applied to Whites. During the last 
ten years the South has been opening up sawmills and 
lumber camps, often far back in the wilderness. In order 
to get men either from the South or the North, it was nec- 
essary to prepay their fare, which was subsequently taken 
out of their wages. Hence the proprietors of those camps 
felt that they had a claim on the men's service, and in some 
cases kept them shut up in stockades. For instance, in 
1906, a Hungarian named Trudics went down to Lock- 
hart, Texas, receiving $18.00 for railroad fare, on an 
agreement to work for $1.50 a day. He did not like the 
work and thought he had been deceived as to the terms; 
whereupon he used a freedman's privilege of bolting. He 
was trailed with bloodhounds by one Gallagher, caught, 
brutally whipped by the boss, and driven back, as he said, 
" like a steer at the point of a revolver.^' 

Similar cases have been reported from various parts of 
the South, involving both native Americans and foreigners ; 

280 



PEONAGE 

the latter have sometimes had the special advantage of aid 
from the diplomatic representatives of their country. Inas- 
much as some of the state courts were unwilling to take 
action, cases were brought before the federal courts under 
the Peonage Act of 1867. Thus, though the personal abuse 
of Trudics by Gallagher was a state offense which seems 
to have escaped punishment, the violent laying of hands 
on him and restraint of his liberty was made a case before 
a federal court; and Gallagher was sent to prison for 
three months. It is plain that if foreigners and white 
Northerners can be practically enslaved, the same thing 
may happen to white Southerners ; this and other like con- 
victions have had a good effect. Quite beyond the injus- 
tice of the practice, it has been a damage to the South be- 
cause it checks a possible current of immigration. 

In 1908 an attempt was made to show a case of peon- 
age of Italians on the Sunny Side plantation, Arkansas. 
It proved that one of the hands had grown dissatisfied and 
started to Greenville to take a train for the wide world, 
leaving unpaid a debt of about a hundred dollars at the 
commissary. One of his employers followed him to the 
station and told him that if he attempted to leave he would 
arrest him for breach of contract; whereupon the man re- 
turned to the plantation. This was certainly not peonage, 
and the grand jury consequently refused to indict; but it 
was an attempt to enforce specific performance of a labor 
contract. Peonage of Whites seems to have about come 
to an end; it was not stopped, however, by public opinion 
in the South, and it still goes on through the holding in 
bondage of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Negroes, either 
in unabashed defiance of law or through the means of 
cruelly harsh and unjust laws, aided by bad judges. 

In the first place, many planters assume that a Negro 
281 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

who is on the debit side on their books has no right to 
leave the plantation, even for a few days, and as one of 
them expressed it to me : " If he goes away, I just go 
and get him." A case recently occurred in Monroe, La., 
where some colored men were brought from Texas by one 
Cole on the assurance that they were to be employed in 
Arkansas. Instead they were switched off and set to work 
in Louisiana. One of them departed and made his way to 
Texas, but his master followed him, seized him, brought 
him back in defiance of all law, and set him at work again. 
The master was tried for peonage in Texas, but was not 
convicted. 

One of the worst criminal cases of this kind is that 
of John W. Pace, of Dade City, Ala., who not only shut 
in his own people, but would seize any black that chanced 
along that way and compel him to work for him a few 
days. Judge Thomas G. Jones, who in 1901 was put on 
the federal bench in that state, made it his business to fol- 
low up Pace; when a jury declined to convict him, the 
judge rated them soundly; another case was made out 
and Pace thought it prudent to plead guilty, and was sen- 
tenced to fifty-five years in the penitentiary. The Supreme 
Court of the United States affirmed the constitutionality of 
the peonage law and Pace threw up his hands ; then, on the 
request of the judge, the President pardoned him. These 
and some like convictions have shaken the system of con- 
fining men because the employer thinks that otherwise they 
will go away. 

Nevertheless, under cover of iniquitous state laws, peon- 
age of Negroes goes on steadily, first by a most unjust en- 
forcement of various special state statutes which require 
agricultural labor contracts to be made in writing, and to 
run for a year. The illiterate Negro often does not know 

282 



PEONAGE 

what he is signing, and if he did know might see no means 
of helping himself. It is difficult to contrive a legal pen- 
alty for a Negro who simply leaves his contract and goes 
off; he might be arrested and held for debt, since almost 
all such hands owe their employer for supplies or money; 
but all the Southern states have constitutional provisions 
against imprisonment for debt. The difficulty is ingeni- 
ously avoided by most of the states in the Lower South, 
which make it a punishable offense to draw advances on 
" false pretenses " ; thereby a hand who attempts to leave 
while in debt to his master can be arrested as a petty crim- 
inal. But how is it provable that the Negro might not 
intend to return and carry out his contract ? In Alabama 
the legislature, with intent to avoid the federal peonage 
law, has provided that the acceptance of an advance and 
the subsequent nonperformance of the contract shall be 
proof presumptive of fraudulent intent at the time of mak- 
ing the contract. Now the employer can follow his ab- 
sconding hand by a process thus described by a planter. 
You arrest him on the criminal charge of false pretenses, 
which is equivalent to a charge of stealing the money ; you 
get him convicted ; he is fined, and in lieu of money to pay 
the fine he goes to jail; then you pay the fine and costs 
and the judge assigns him to you to work out the fine, and 
you have him back on your plantation, backed up by the 
authority of the state. 

Let a few actual illustrations, all based on Southern 
testimony, show what is done under such a system. A 
woman borrows six dollars of a neighboring planter, who 
afterwards makes a demand for the money. As it is not 
paid, he sets up without further ceremony the pretense 
that she is obliged to work for him, refuses to receive back 
the money which her present employer furnishes her, and 
19 283 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

attempts to compel her to labor. In South Carolina a 
man starts to leave his employer, asserting that he has paid 
up his debt; the employer denies it; the man is brought 
into court and fined thirty dollars, and in lieu of the money 
goes back to the same servitude, this time hopeless. A ISFegro 
in Alabama makes a contract January 1st and takes $5.00 
earnest money, and works until May; the master refuses 
to give him a*house. He works two months more, and then 
leaves, is arrested for breach of contract, and the courts 
hold that the acceptance of that five dollars proves that he 
did not mean to carry out his contract, although he has 
worked seven months. A woman makes a labor contract; 
and before it expires marries a man whom she had never 
met at the time of making her contract; held, that her 
marriage proves that she did not mean to carry out the 
contract when she made it, and she is therefore guilty of 
false pretenses. 

Even without a contract a Negro may be legally obliged 
to labor for a white man under vagrancy laws, by which 
Negroes who are not visibly supporting themselves may be 
convicted for that crime, and then sent to the County 
Farm, or hired out to somebody who will pay their fine. 
Once in the hands of a master, they are helpless. For in- 
stance, one Glenny Helms, who was apparently guilty of 
no offense, was in 1907 arrested, fined and sold to one 
Turner, who in this case thought it prudent to plead guilty 
of peonage. The son of this Turner was the agent in the 
most frightful case of peonage as yet recorded. A woman 
was accused of a misdemeanor; it is doubtful whether she 
had committed any; but at any rate she was fined fifteen 
dollars ; Turner paid the fine ; she was assigned to him and 
he set her to the severe labor of clearing land. And then 
what happened? What was a hustling master to do with 

284: 



PEONAGE 

a woman who would not pile brush as fast as the men 
brought it, but to whip her, and if she still did not reform, 
to whip her again, and when she still would not do the 
work, to string her up by the wrists for two hours, and 
when she still " shirked," God Almighty at last came to the 
rescue ; she was dead ! When they tried to prosecute the 
man for murder in the state courts, the sheriff of the 
county (who was in the gang) came to the other slaves who 
had seen this, as they were summoned to the grand jury, 
and told them that if they gave any damaging testimony 
" we will put you in the river /^ Such things happen oc- 
casionally in all civilized lands. As dreadful a crime was 
committed in Paterson, New Jersey, not many years ago ; 
but there are two differences between the Bosschieter and 
the Turner cases. Those Jersey murderers were all con- 
victed; that man Turner walks the earth, unmolested, not 
even lynched. The public sentiment of New Jersey was 
clear that an offense against the humblest foreigner was 
an offense against the Commonwealth; but the blood of 
that poor black woman cries in vain to the courts of Ala- 
bama; and the thousands of people down there who feel 
furious about such matters are so far helpless. 

The states by their statutes of false pretenses are part- 
ners in those iniquities, but the federal government has 
done its best in prosecutions. Between fifty and a hundred 
indictments have been brought. Federal Judge Boyd, of 
North Carolina, said of his district : " There has been evi- 
dence here of cruelty so excessive as to put to shame the 
veriest barbarian that ever lived." Federal Judge Braw- 
ley, of South Carolina, has held void an act of that State 
making breach of labor contract a misdemeanor. Convic- 
tions have been obtained in half a dozen states, and it is 
altogether likely that the Supreme Court of the United 

285 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

States will confirm this good work by holding invalid all 
state statutes which attempt to enforce a debt by sending 
a man to prison, or still more by selling his services to a 
master. 

Here, as in so many other phases of this question, the 
troublous thing is not that there should be cruelty and 
oppression or servitude. Gangs of Italians under a pa- 
drone in the North are sometimes little better than bond- 
men. Masters of almshouses and reform schools will 
sometimes be brutal unless their institutions are frequently 
and carefully inspected. The real difficulty is that the 
superior race permits its laws and courts to be used for 
the benefit of cruel and oppressive men ; that public senti- 
ment did not prevent the peonage trials by making the cases 
impossible; that a federal judge in Alabama should be 
assailed by members of the bar and members of Congress 
because he stopped these practices. Peonage is an offense 
which cannot be committed by Xcgroes ; it requires the cap- 
ital, the prestige, and the commercial influence of white 
men. 

The federal government has instituted investigations 
of these practices, and Assistant Attorney General Russell 
has urged the passing of such federal statutes as shall dis- 
tinctly reach these cases of detention; and also the amend- 
ment of the state laws so as to take away the authority 
to transfer the services of anyone from the state to an 
individual. This last is a reform of which there is espe- 
cial need. Most of the cases of peonage arise out of the 
practice of selling the specific services of a convict to an 
individual ; and it carries with it practically the right to 
compel such a person to work by physical force. What is 
to be done with a bondman who refuses to touch a hoe, 
except to whip him, and to keep on whipping him till he 

286 



PEONAGE 

yields? The guards and wardens of prisons in the South 
use the lash freely, but they are subject at least to nominal 
inspection and control. To transfer the distasteful privi- 
lege to a contractor or farmer is to restore the worst inci- 
dents of slavery. 

Sympathy must be felt for the planters and employers 
who make their plans, offer good wages, give regular em- 
ployment, and see their profits reduced or eliminated be- 
cause they cannot get steady labor. Much of the peonage 
is simply a desperate attempt to make men earn their 
living. The trouble is that nobody is wise enough to in- 
vent a method of compelling specific performance of a 
labor contract which shall not carry with it the principle of 
bondage. Men enlisted in the army and navy may be 
tracked, arrested, and punished if they break their contracts 
— but they cannot be lashed into shouldering a gun or 
cooking a meal. Sailors are, by the peculiar conditions of 
isolation at sea, subject to being put in irons for refusing 
to obey an order — but the cat has disappeared from the 
legal arguments to do their duty. It is the concomitant of 
freedom that the private laborer shall not be compelled to 
work by force; there is no way by which the South can 
cancel that triumph of civilization, the exercise of free 
will. When will people learn the good old Puritan lesson 
that the power to do well involves the power to refuse well 
doing? That you cannot offer the incitement of free 
labor without including the possibility of the laborer pre- 
ferring to be idle? 



CHAPTER XXI 



WHITE EDUCATION 



THE most progressive nations have now definitely 
come to the conclusion that there is no mode of in- 
creasing industrial and commercial efficiency so 
effective as universal education sufficiently prolonged to ef- 
fect permanent improvement in the observing and reason- 
ing powers of the children/' So said that primate of Amer- 
ican education, President Eliot, in an address at Tuskegee, 
Ala. Though speaking before an audience chiefly composed 
of colored people, he was laying down a general principle, 
for he goes on to say that in the Southern states " for both 
whites and blacks the school time is too short; a large 
proportion of the children leave school at too early an age ; 
well-trained teachers are lacking; and the range and vari- 
ety of accessible instruction are too small. Hence a large 
proportion of both the white race and the black race in the 
South are in urgent need of better facilities for education." 
This is one point of view; at the other extremity stand 
such men as a Southern editor who has recently written, 
" As an educational influence the investment of $100,000 
in a cotton mill is worth ten times the $100,000 given a 
Southern college." What does the South as a whole think 
on this question of education ? What are its needs ? What 
has it so far done ? What is it prepared to do ? How does 
education affect the race question? 

288 



WHITE EDUCATION 

Throughout the South there has been and still persists 
an excellent tradition of reading and of education among 
the classes which may be presumed to afford such advan- 
tages for their children. Classical allusions and quotations 
from Scripture and Shakespeare are still recognized by all 
well-educated men. Some of the few fine old plantation 
houses contain elegantly appointed libraries, stopping 
short, however, at the year 1836, or whenever the owner 
died. The city of Charleston has better bookstores than 
the city of Albany. Probably more people in North Caro- 
lina can comment on Shakespeare than in Maine; and the 
man who can read Horace without a pony and quote Greek 
without looking at the book is a public character. Besides 
this admiration for an old-fashioned learning that is now 
passing, the South feels a genuine and lively interest in 
what goes on in the world. The present generation of 
fairly well-to-do people travel more, see more, read more 
that is written in their own time, think more than did 
their fathers and grandfathers. They feel a genuine in- 
terest in education, put intelligent thought on methods, 
show respect for the colleges, are willing to spend money 
on schools. 

Like England in the Eighteenth Century the South 
abounded in readers of good literature, while the land was 
full of ignorance. Though in early Virginia suggestions 
were made for free common schools, and Thomas Jefferson 
strenuously advocated them, though in the forties and fif- 
ties several Southern states had elaborate paper systems 
of schools, outside the large cities there were no graded 
schools open to all white children such as were famil- 
iar in the North after 1840. Even New Orleans waited 
for good school buildings till the fortunate bequest of 
McDonogh ; as for free rural schools, not a single Southern 

289 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

state had organized and set in operation a system before 
the Civil War. From the first the sparse settlement of- 
the South, the presence of the Negro, and the lack of that 
commercial connection with the rest of the world which 
so arouses the human mind, made it difficult and perhaps 
impossible to found a system of general popular education 
in that region. 

For the higher education of the dominant class much 
more was done. Beginning with William and Mary in 
1692 — the first colonial college except Harvard — many 
colleges were established. The first state university was 
North Carolina, founded in 1790; the first American 
university of the German type was the University of Vir- 
ginia, which began operations in 1825 ; the first institution 
to introduce coeducation was Blount College, which, 
about 1800, conferred the degree of A.B. upon a woman. 
But for various reasons there never were money enough, 
students enough, and trained educators enough to man 
the Southern colleges that were founded; and secondary 
schools to feed the colleges were lacking. The girls had 
a few boarding schools, some of which were called colleges 
by courtesy, but their education was superficial. Many 
students who could afford it found their way to Northern 
colleges, and that is why John C. Calhoun, the apostle of 
slavery, was a Yale graduate, and Barnwell Rhett, the pro- 
tagonist of secession, was a graduate of Harvard. 

After the Civil War came a dismal period, when some 
of the old universities were closed for want of means and 
of professors who could take the oath of allegiance. The 
training of the children of the best families at that period 
has been thus described by one who experienced it : " The 
schools that I attended — may God forgive the young 
women who one after another taught the children of the 

290 



WHITE EDUCATION 

sparsety settled neighborhood — were farces and frauds. 
There was no public school. ... We lived in sort of a se- 
cluded training place for Southern gentlemen. . . . We 
never saw a newspaper. . . . The professor of mathematics 
— so a rumor ran — was a freethinker. He was said to have 
read Darwin and become an evolutionist. But the report 
was not generally believed; for, it was argued, even if 
he had read Darwin, a man of his great intellect 
would instantly see the fallacy of that doctrine and dis- 
card it," 

One of the few benefits conferred by the Reconstruc- 
tion governments was a system of general public schools 
nominally open to every child in city or country ; but just as 
the education of Negroes and Poor Whites was beginning, 
the schools were separated for the two races, and the Ne- 
groes were cut off from Southern white teachers. To start 
the new system there was no tradition of public school 
training and management, little sense of public duty in lay- 
ing sufficient taxes, and the South was very poor. Hence it 
was about 1885 before the South put into operation a gen- 
eral educational system, supported by public taxation. 
The most recent statistics available (for 1906) show over 
6,000,000 common school pupils in the South, besides 
380,000 pupils in private schools, 118,000 pupils in public 
high schools, and 34,000 more in private secondary schools ; 
38,000 students in public and private universities, col- 
leges and schools of technology. Every Southern state has 
now worked out some system of both rural and urban pub- 
lic schools, and several of them have a sizable State school 
fund which is distributed among the districts. The or- 
dinary type of rural school is practically the district school 
of the North over again. City schools are graded in the 
usual fashion. Most states have a State Superintendent 

291 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

of Education, and the more progressive communities like 
Louisiana are introducing county superintendents with 
power to compel good schools. Surely with so many peo- 
ple and so much money, all must be happy in the South. 
It is an educational army, with common school infantry, 
secondary school cavalry, and in the institutions of higher 
learning the heavy artillery and the big guns. Yet it is 
an army in which every division, brigade, and regiment 
is divided into two camps, in which spear clashes on shield, 
for hardly anything in the South so brings out into relief 
the race question as the problem of education, and espe- 
cially of negro education. 

The Reconstruction governments made no provision 
for public high schools, but the growth of towns and cities 
in the South and the need of preparatory schools for the 
colleges, and the public sense of the value of secondary 
education, have compelled the founding of a great number 
of such schools, both for girls and boys. Xormal schools 
have also developed till there are 45 with over 10,000 stu- 
dents. The colleges are also flourishing; and of profes- 
sional schools the South has more than 160, with above 
12,000 students. 

A rough measure of the need of education is the sta- 
tistics of illiteracy, which in the reports of the United 
States Commissioner of Education is defined as the status 
of a person over ten years of age who is able neither to read 
nor to write. Such illiterates in Germany are about one 
per cent of the population; in England about six per 
cent ; in the whole of the United States about ten per cent. 
The various states of the Union show great variations: 
in Nebraska in 1900 it was two per cent; and the lowest 
Southern state, Missouri, with six per cent, showed a 
greater proportion of illiterates than any of 27 Northern 

292 



WHITE EDUCATION 

states; while the 12 highest communities on the list, from 
/Arkansas with twenty per cent to Louisiana with thirty- 
eight per cent, are all Southern but two. Of 58,000,000 
persons sufficiently old to be capable of both reading and 
writing in some language in the United States in 1900, 
6,000,000 were illiterate, of whom about 4,000,000 lived in 
the South; of the 21 most illiterate states and territories, 
15 are Southern, the worst being Alabama, South Carolina, 
and Louisiana, in all of which more than a third of the 
population was illiterate. This alarming state of things is 
not due wholly to the negro race; out of 5,700,000 blacks 
at least ten years of age, 2,700,000, or forty-eight per cent, 
were illiterate; out of 13,000,000 Whites, 1,400,000, or 
eleven per cent, were illiterates. The white illiterates, with 
all the advantages of their superior race, were half as 
numerous as the Negroes! Out of 1,900,000 white chil- 
dren of school age, 200,000, or ten and a half per cent, 
could not read or write ; out of 1,000,000 colored children 
of the same age, 300,000 were illiterate, which is twenty- 
five per cent. 

For both races this proportion of illiterates is steadily 
diminishing; and that is the effect of the schools and of 
nothing else. Never again will the South see a generation 
like the present, in which many adults have had no oppor- 
tunity, or have neglected the opportunity of going to school 
when children. These figures accord with the experience 
of other states; for instance. New Hampshire in 1890 was 
as illiterate as Missouri was in 1900; and in both states 
illiteracy is steadily decreasing. As for the Southern Poor 
Whites, it is true, as Murphy says, that they have a po- 
tentiality of education. " I find no hopelessness in it, be- 
cause it is the illiteracy, not of the degenerate, but simply 
of the unstarted. Our unlettered white people are native 

293 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

American in stock, virile in faculty and capacity, free in 
spirit, unbroken, uncorrupted, fitted to learn." 

The gross figures of illiteracy are misleading, because 
the old people who cannot now be taught to read and write 
reduce the general average against the children who are 
learning the arts of intelligence. The percentage of col- 
ored illiterates in the whole of the United States in 1900 
was forty-four per cent as against seventy per cent in 
1880; in Louisiana the percentage runs up to sixty-one 
per cent; but the Negroes between ten years old and 
twenty-five show only about thirty per cent of illiteracy, 
and that proportion is steadily decreasing. In 1900 the 
illiterate children from ten to fourteen 3^ears of age were 
in MississiiDpi only twenty-two per cent. AYith reasonably 
good schools and j^roper laws for compulsory attendance 
illiteracy may be expected to sink to about the figures of 
other civilized nations. 

This raises at once the question of the actual efficiency 
of the schools in the South, their comparison with other 
parts of the country, their probable effect upon the future 
of the region. The ability to write one's name and to read 
a few words is only the beginning of education; the real 
educational question in the South is. What are the schools 
doing beyond the rudiments of the three E's ? Some light 
is thrown on that question by comparing the school sta- 
tistics of the Lower South with those of a block of similar 
Western and Northwestern agricultural communities from 
Indiana to Utah: 20,700,000 Southerners have 7,000,000 
children of school age (five years to eighteen), of whom 
4,400,000 are enrolled and the average daily attendance is 
2,700,000; 20,700,000 Northerners with 6,000,000 chil- 
dren (a million less than the equivalent South) enroll 
4,500,000 and have a daily attendance of 3,200,000. The 

294 



WHITE EDUCATION 

Southern group has 92,000 teachers; the IsTorthern, 158,- 
000. The value of Southern school property is $42,000,- 
000; of Northern, $217,000,000, or over four times as 
much. The Southern school revenue is $26,000,000; the 
Northern, $92,000,000. The average expenditure per pu- 
pil attending in the South is under $10.00; in the North 
nearly $30.00. The South spent about IG cents on each 
hundred dollars of valuation; the North spent about 20 
cents. 

When the whole South together, including such rich 
states as Maryland and Missouri, is compared with an 
equivalent population group in the North, the figures are 
more favorable to that section: 28,000,000 Southerners 
furnished an average daily attendance of 3,700,000 chil- 
dren; the same number in the North furnished 4,200,000. 
The South has 127,000 teachers; the North, 200,000. The 
total value of Southern school property is $84,000,000; 
of Northern, $294,000,000. A comparison of per-capita ex- 
penditure in the year 1900 showed an average school tax in 
the United States of $2.84 per head; but not a single state 
south of Washington raised above $2.10. Alabama raised 
only 50 cents, and even the rich state of Texas only about 
$1.50, as against $4.80 in North Dakota. Tennessee spent 
$1,800,000 a year in public education; Wisconsin, with 
an equivalent population, spent $5,500,000; South Caro- 
lina, with a population nine tenths that of California, spent 
one eighth as much. The state of Mississippi spent $6.17 
per pupil annually; the state of Vermont spent $22.85. 

Inasmuch as the Negroes contribute several million 
school children and not very much in taxes, it will be in- 
structive to compare the 12,000,000 Whites of the Lower 
South with 12,000,000 Northwestern Whites, in those 
forms of education which are referable chiefly to the 

295 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

Whites. The Lower South, on this basis, furnished in 
1906 68,600 pupils in public secondary schools against 
173,600 in the equivalent North; the secondary school 
plants in the South cost $23,000,000 ; in the North $52,- 
000,000. The college students in the South were 27,800; 
in the North, 27,200. The Southern college income was 
$6,000,000; the Northern, $7,500,000. Here, again, the 
comparison of the whole South with 18 million Whites 
against 18 equivalent millions in the Northwest is some- 
what more favorable. The secondary plant costs $40,000,- 
000 against $77,000,000 in the North. The normal schools 
of the South have an income of $1,400,000, those of the 
North $2,400,000. The Southern college students are 38,- 
000 against 42,000; and the college income, $9,000,000 
against $12,600,000. 

The inevitable inference from these figures is that the 
South still needs to bring up its equipment and its expendi- 
ture if it is to educate as efficiently as its neighbors; and 
this presumption is strengthened by observation of schools 
of various grades. The Southern city schools are good, es- 
pecially in the former border states ; St. Louis, Baltimore, 
and Louisville come close up to Cleveland, Indianapolis, and 
St. Paul in the outward evidences of educational progress. 
Statistical comparison of a group of Southern cities with 
a group of Northern cities of the same aggregate popula- 
tion shows that in externals they are not far apart; the 
Northern schools have more schoolrooms, more teachers 
and more plant, but the annual expenditures are about as 
large in the Southern as in the Northern group. 

The rural white schools are a different matter. It is, to 
be sure, nearly thirty years since old Bill Williams explained 
why there was no school in the Clover Bottom district in 
the Kentucky mountains : " They couldn't have no school 

296 



WHITE EDUCATION 

because there wasn't nary door or winder in the school- 
house. I've got that door and winder, and I paid a dollar 
for 'em ; but I've been keeping 'em, you see, because there 
was trouble about the title. Jim Harris gin us that land, 
and we 'lowed 'twas all right, because it belonged to his 
gran'ther and he was the favorite grandson ; but when the 
old man died it 'peared like he had willed it to somebody 
else ; and I wouldn't put no door nor winder into no school- 
house where there ain't no title, and there hain't been no 
school there sence. You want to know when all that 
trouble happened 'bout the title? I reckon it was fifteen 
or twenty year ago." There are still just such schools or 
rather such no schools in many parts of the South. 

Even in prosperous regions, buildings, apparatus, and 
teacher may be alike, dirty and repellent. Take, for in- 
stance, Mt. Moriah school in Coosa County, Alabama. 
The building is twenty-five feet square, inclosing a single 
room with two windows and two doorways, one of them 
blocked up. In the middle is an iron stove, around which 
on a winter's day are parked four benches in a hollow 
square, upon which, or studying in the corner, huddle and 
wriggle twenty-three pupils, ranging from seven up to 
twenty-one years of age. They are reading physiology 
aloud, in the midst of the gaunt room, with very little in 
the way of blackboards or materials. An example of the 
better district schoolhouse is in a populous region near the 
mill town of Talassee ; a new building with eleven windows, 
well ceiled throughout, with a clean gravel space in front, 
good desks and plenty of blackboard. 

The curse of many of the rural schools is their easy 
money, for all the Southern states have a system of state 
school funds, the income of which is subdivided among the 
districts, and is in some of them about enough to keep up 

297 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

school three or four months on the usual scale of pa}anent 
to teachers. "When the school fund is exhausted, great 
numbers of districts close their schoolhouses, and the re- 
sult is that the average number of school days in a year is 
far below that of Northern schools. In Massachusetts, 
Connecticut, and Rhode Island the public schools are in 
session about 190 days; in Georgia, 118; in Arkansas, 87. 
These are averages; and since the city schools commonly 
run seven or eight months, there must be many districts in 
which there are not over fifty or sixty days' school. One 
of the great educational reforms now going on in the South 
is to secure from the local governments appropriations to 
continue the schools after the state fund runs out. "When 
the South is sufficiently aroused to the blessing of educa- 
tion, it will find that it has money enough for its needs. 

Another defect is in the schoolhouses. The Southern 
towns and cities are coming to follow the example of* the 
"\¥est and North in putting up imposing school buildings, 
though there is no such need for elaborate heating appa- 
ratus and ventilation as in the North, and they are in 
general simpler. The country schoolhouse is in many 
cases a big, dirty hut, often built of logs, wretchedly fur- 
nished, and devoid of the commonest appliances of civiliza- 
tion. There seems to be a feeling throughout the South 
that schoolhouses cannot be built wholly out of taxation, 
but the people on the ground must contribute at least a 
part of the cost. You may find neat and tidy rural school- 
houses, actually painted, but they are far from typical. 

Another difficulty is the teachers. The monthly sal- 
aries for white teachers in several of the Southern states 
are high. A Coosa County farmer complains that a 
teacher in his district is getting $3.50 a day for twenty 
days in the month, which was more than any farmer in 

298 



WHITE EDUCATION 

the district could earn. But of course her $70.00 a month 
would only run while school was in session, which might 
be five months. In Louisiana rural teachers receive 
higher salaries than in any other state in the Union, and 
no commonwealth is making such determined effort to im- 
prove its rural schools. In the remoteness of Catahoola- 
Parish may be seen a system of wagonettes to bring chil- 
dren to central graded schools, a reform which goes very 
slowly in New England. 

A further reason for the backwardness of the Southern 
rural schools is that they are in the hands of county super- 
inteijdents, whose place until recently has too often been 
political. Now there is a body of trained superintendents 
who are giving people object lessons in what can be done 
even with poor buildings by well-trained teachers. The 
South is also bending its energies on normal schools, and 
the result is a growing body of teachers with professional 
spirit, who expect to make the schools their life work. The 
state superintendents are also improving in their profes- 
sional power. The worst Southern rural schools are not 
too much behind those that Horace Mann found in Massa- 
chusetts when he began his work in 1837 ; the wages of the 
rural teachers are probably not so low as those in Maine; 
and the next decade will see a vast improvement in the 
rural schools throughout the South. 

So with the secondary schools, where the number of 
pupils has astonishingly increased. In 1898 there were 
in the South 1,107 schools and 72,000 pupils; in 1906 there 
were 1,685 schools (Texas alone has 321), 5,100 teachers, 
and 118,000 pupils. A great change has come about in the 
education of girls. Nearly half the teachers and nearly 
two thirds of the pupils (70,000) in these schools are 
women, and that means that in connection with the nor- 
20 299 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

mal schools, in which there are over 7,000 women students, 
the South is now training a body of teachers who are going, 
to make a great change in the education of the next gener- 
ation. The growth of secondary schools means further that 
the South is putting an end to a reproach of many years' 
standing — namely, that it could not adequately prepare 
pupils for college. 

It was a severe lesson when the trustees of the Carnegie 
retiring allowance fund in 1906 laid down its principle that 
no grant would be made to professors in any college which 
did not come up to the following standard : " An institu- 
tion to be ranked as a college must have at least six pro- 
fessors giving their entire time to college and university 
work, a course of four full years in liberal arts and sciences, 
and should require for admission not less than the usual 
four years of academic or high school preparation, or its 
equivalent, in addition to the preacademic or grammar 
school studies." To the surprise of the Lower South, it was 
discovered that only one institution, Tulane University, 
had insisted on the condition of four years academic or 
high school preparation. Several other organizations are 
waking the South up to the need of improvements, such as 
the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the 
Southern states, with nineteen colleges as members ; a com- 
mission of the Southern Methodist Church; the General 
Education Board of New York, with its fund of $43,000,- 
000; and the Southern Education Board. 

In the South as in the North, there are two types of 
institutions of higher learning, the endowed (in most 
cases denominational) and the public. The number of 
Southern colleges is considerable; 166 out of 493 in the 
United States — which is not far from the proportion of 
the population; but only 8 of these institutions have up- 

300 



WHITE EDUCATION 

ward of 500 undergraduate students, as against 42 in the 
rest of the Union; and the total number of undergraduate 
students in universities, colleges, and technological schools, 
25,300, is about a fifth of the total of 122,000 in the United 
States, while the normal proportion would be a third. The 
property of the Southern colleges ($99,000,000) is about 
a fifth of the total college property; the income of $7,- 
300,000 is about a sixth of the whole, the benefactions in 
1906 ($2,400,000) about a seventh. That is, in number, 
wealth, and students. Southern institutions of higher learn- 
ing represent about the same reduced proportion to the 
North as in the case of public wealth and public expendi- 
tures ; that means that an average million of people in the 
South enjoy less than half the educational advantages pos- 
sessed by an average million in the Northwest. 

This rather favorable proportion does not obtain in 
women's education ; of the fifteen colleges for women, recog- 
nized by the Bureau of Education as of full collegiate rank, 
only 4 are in the South ; they include less than an eighth 
of the women students, and their property is less than a 
tenth. The 95 Southern institutions classified as " Col- 
leges for women, Division B " are practically boarding 
schools of secondary grade, and are balanced by the greater 
number of Northern girls in high schools ; 345,000 against 
70,000 Southern high school girls; the 17,000 in private 
high schools and academies are overbalanced by 35,000 in 
the North. One of the great needs of the South at pres- 
ent is high-class colleges for girls, which shall turn out a 
well-grounded and well-trained body of women, interested 
in public affairs, and shall be a nursery of high school and 
college teachers. 

The Southern denominational colleges are open prac- 
tically to men only. The normal schools receive both 

301 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

sexes, and 4,000 women are registered in the Southern uni- 
versities, colleges, and technological schools which are open 
to both sexes, as against 10,000 men. As the Southern 
states grow richer, they are giving more attention and more 
money to their public institutions, but so far few of their 
advanced institutions take rank alongside the great North- 
western universities. The University of North Carolina 
has 682 students and an excellent tradition ; the University 
of Texas counts 1,100 men and 400 women, and is in many 
ways the most flourishing of the Southern institutions. 
The University of Virginia, though it has an annual grant 
from the legislature, is practically an endowed institution 
with 700 students ; the University of Georgia has 408 stu- 
dents, though it at one time put forth the whimsical claim 
that it had the largest attendance in the United States, 
surpassing Harvard and Columbia, a result made up by 
adding in day scholars in affiliated schools below the high 
school grade. The state university funds, including the 
federal grants, are usually dispersed among two, or even 
three or four small institutions. 

There is a vigorous intellectual movement in the South. 
The recent graduates, who at one time had a preference 
for college appointments in their own colleges, are now 
giving way to a throng of eager young scholars who have 
enjoyed graduate study in American or foreign universities 
and hold higher degrees. Wherever you fall in with a body 
of those men, you are impressed with their good training 
and their broad outlook. Politics are yearly less forceful 
in such institutions; and probably never again will there 
be such an episode as happened in a border state uni- 
versity about ten years ago. A new president discovered 
after a time that the janitor of the college buildings was 
not disposed to take instructions from him, whereupon he 

302 



WHITE EDUCATION 

appealed to the board of trustees to put the man definitely 
under his control. The trustees held their meeting, at the 
end of which the janitor appeared with a bundle of blue 
envelopes, the first of which he offered to the president 
with the confidential remark, " You're fired ! " The others 
were addressed to the professors, every one of whom was 
summarily removed. Having thus gone back to first prin- 
ciples, the trustees elected a new president and a new fac- 
ulty, including some of the old teachers; strange to say, 
that university has since become one of the most promising 
in its section. In all institutions of this kind and in the 
literary faculties of many colleges is a sprinkling of North- 
ern professors, for the Southern colleges, like the Northern, 
are more tolerant than they were half a century ago. Most 
of the young men now receiving appointments in colleges 
and scientific institutions have studied in other Southern 
colleges, in the North or in Europe ; and in all the learned 
associations they take their places as well-equipped and 
productive men. 

Professional education has also made great strides in 
the South. Many of the most promising young men are 
sent to Northern law and medical schools, not only be- 
cause of their supposed educational advantages, but be- 
cause it is thought well for a young man to have a double 
horizon ; but the greater number find instruction in nearby 
professional schools either established by practitioners or 
attached to some university. For the medical students the 
hospitals which are springing up everywhere furnish clin- 
ical material. Theological education is less systematized; 
the older and more settled denominations have good schools, 
but too many preachers in the back country have no other 
training than a natural "gift of the gab." In the agri- 
cultural and mechanical colleges, and the engineering de- 

303 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

partments of the endowed public universities, the South is 
educating her future engineers and scientific men. 

The educative effects of travel and intercourse with 
other people are making themselves felt. In ante-bellum 
times few Southerners traveled widely, except the com- 
paratively small number of the richer young men who found 
their way to Northern colleges, or abroad. Until ten years 
ago it was difficult to hold Southern conventions and 
gatherings of intellectual men of kindred aims because peo- 
ple could not afford to travel. Now there is more circu- 
lation, more knowledge of the world, more willingness to 
see in what respects the South lags behind, a greater spirit 
of cooperation between Southern states, and with some 
people of other sections. The norms of common schools, 
secondary schools, and higher institutions are now laid 
down on about the same principles as in the North, and it 
remains to develop them, to make paper systems actual, to 
get more of the school children registered, more of the 
registered children in attendance, more months of school 
for those who attend, better teachers for the longer sessions, 
new buildings to accommodate the larger numbers, more 
students to fill the little colleges and to enlarge the uni- 
versities. White education in the South is in a progres- 
sive and hopeful condition. 

In the means of education outside of schools and col- 
leges the South is still much behind the richer North, and 
still more behind foreign countries. Museums and picture 
galleries are few, aside from private collections in Balti- 
more, Washington, Richmond, and New Orleans. The 
fine old paintings that one sees in clubs and public build- 
ings come from an earlier age, for there are few Southern 
artists. Nevertheless, the architectural standard is quite 
as high as in the North, and the tradition of wide spaces 

304 



WHITE EDUCATION 

and colonnades persists. In its public buildings the South 
is in general superior to the North; even in remote county 
seats one may find buildings old and new of classic propor- 
tions, dignified and stately. 

The South has been poor in collections of books, but all 
the larger Universities have fair libraries, and the cities 
have public libraries, and the numerous gifts of Carnegie 
have stimulated this form of public education. Several 
Southern cities, as, for example, Galveston, have endowed 
institutions for lecture courses on the general plan of the 
Lowell courses in Boston. 

The South has never been highly productive in litera- 
ture, and too much of the Southern writing bears evidence 
of a purpose of speaking for the South or in a Southern 
fashion. A considerable part of the books written by 
Southerners are about the South in one way or another; 
there is a sense of sectional obligation. This is the less 
necessary for a region from which have sprung Poe, one of 
the world's acknowledged literary delights, and Lanier. 
There is a school of Southern writers, of whom the late 
Joel Chandler Harris is a type, who have found broader 
themes of life about them and have given to the world the 
delightful flavor of a passing and romantic epoch. The 
principal literary work of the South is now in its news- 
papers. 

Another intellectual force is found in the Southern his- 
torical societies, of which there is one in almost every state. 
They have shown a lively interest in saving the records of 
the early history of the South and in preserving its me- 
morials from destruction. There are also two or three lit- 
erary periodicals of distinct literary merit, in which one 
finds an expression of the newest and most modern South. 

In every direction, then, the white people of the South 
305 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

are alert. The schools are fair and improving, the com- 
munity is awake to the need of educating all the children^ 
even in the remote country; and though the taxes for edu- 
cation are still very light, there is a disposition to increase 
them. In Texas, for example, where there is a state tax, 
the people have by constitutional amendment authorized 
all school districts to double that amount by local taxa- 
tion. If the Whites were the only people to be educated, 
and if education were the panacea, if it brought assurance 
of good government, the Southern question would in due 
time take care of itself. 

The most hopeful sign of intellectual progress is the 
association of those most interested for the promotion of 
their common ends; such is the Cooperative Education 
Association of Virginia which holds annual meetings and 
general conferences for education. These meetings are 
means of attracting public attention to the problems and 
of suggesting the solution. 

For many years education of the Whites in the South 
has been aided from the North, first, through considerable 
gifts for the education of the Mountain Whites, and sec- 
ond, through more sparing aid to colleges for Whites in 
the lowlands. Eecently, however, the attention of wealthy 
Northern givers has been turned to the importance of up- 
lifting the whole white Southern community, and after 
several annual visits to the South under the patronage of 
Mr. Robert C. Ogden, of New York, a Southern Education 
Board was formed, the purpose of which is to rouse people 
to the need of improving their education; following it is 
the General Education Board, which makes small gifts to 
educational institutions usually on the stipulation that they 
shall raise a conditional amount varying from an equal sum 
to a sum three times as great. This is the more necessary 

306 



WHITE EDUCATION 

as there are only two or three institutions in the South 
that have anything like an adequate endowment. Tulane 
University in New Orleans has a property of several mil- 
lions, and the University of Virginia has recently raised a 
new million outright, but the South has no large body of 
people with superfluous funds and its giving turns habit- 
ually rather in the direction of church construction and 
foreign mission work than to educational institutions. Of 
$1,400,000 given to the University of Virginia during thirty 
years, $900,000 came from Northerners and $270,000 more 
from foreigners living in the South. 

Of late, voices have been raised for some kind of Fed- 
eral aid to Southern education on the plea that where there 
is the greatest intellectual destitution there is the most 
need for money. The appeal is contrary to the usual in- 
stincts of the South in matters of federal and state rela- 
tions, and is strongly opposed by part of the Southern 
press, particularly the Manufacturers' Record, which has 
waged a campaign against even the private gifts made 
through the General Education Board. 



CHAPTER XXII 



NEGRO EDUCATION 



HOWEVEE cheering the interest in general public 
and higher education throughout the South, the 
Whites get most of the benefit ; the lower third of 
the people, the most ignorant, the poorest, the least ambi- 
tious, those whose debasement is tlie greatest menace to the 
community, are less in the public eye; and the efforts to 
educate them arouse antagonism of various kinds. All cal- 
culations as to numbers of pupils, school expenditures, and 
public opinion as to education are subject to restatement 
when the N'egroes are taken into account. Even in states 
like Maryland and Kentucky, where they are not a fourth 
of the population, they disturb the whole educational sys- 
tem, and in the Lower South, where they are in many 
places overwhelming in numbers, the problem of their edu- 
cation becomes alarming. 

Most people suppose that negro education began dur- 
ing the Civil War, but it is as old as colonization; free 
Negroes were always allowed some privileges in this re- 
spect, and thousands of slaves w^ere taught to read by kind- 
hearted mistresses and children of the family; the opinion 
of one who has carefully explored this field of inquiry is 
that of the adult slaves, about one in ten could read and 
write. Nevertheless, this practice was contrary to the 
principles and the laws of the South, as is proved by the 

308 



NEGRO EDUCATION 

dramatic prosecution of Mrs. Margaret Douglass, of Nor- 
folk, in 1853, for the cringe of holding a school for free 
negro children, in ignorance of the fact that it was for- 
bidden as " against the peace and dignity of the Common- 
wealth of Virginia." In due time this person, who had 
admitted unhallowed light into little dark souls, was duly 
sentenced to thirty days' imprisonment, a penalty (as the 
judge explained) intended to be " as a terror to those who 
acknowledge no rule of action but their own evil will and 
pleasure." 

Both the teachings and the prosecutions establish a 
general belief that Negroes could easily learn to read and 
write ; and when during the Civil War refugees flocked into 
the Union camps at Beaufort and Hilton Head, charitably 
disposed people in the North sent down teachers ; and, the 
federal government cooperating, schools were started 
among those Sea Island people, then rough, uncouth, and 
not far beyond the savage state, though now a quiet, well- 
ordered, and industrious folk. From that time till the 
giving up of the Ereedman's Bureau in 1869, the federal 
government expended some money and took some respon- 
sibility for negro education. It was a pathetic sight to see 
old gray-headed people crowding into the schools alongside 
the children, with the inarticulate feeling that reading and 
writing would carry them upward. The Northern mis- 
sionary societies kept up these elementary schools, and then 
began to found schools and colleges for the training of the 
most gifted members of the race. Out of their funds, and 
with the aid of the freedmen, they put up schoolhouses, 
they collected money to establish institutions like Fisk Uni- 
versity in Nashville, Leland and Straight Universities in 
New Orleans, and Atlanta University. Such colleges were 
on the same pattern as other colleges for Whites both North 

309 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

and South, adopting the then almost universal curriculum 
of Greek, Latin, and mathematics, along with smatterings 
of other subjects ; they included preparatory schools, which, 
as in some white colleges both North and South, included 
the larger number of the recorded students. 

Now came the founding of rural schools, for both 
Negroes and Whites; all the Reconstruction constitutions 
provided for free public schools ; and since that time there 
has been public organized education for the colored people, 
such as it is, in every state, in every city, and in most 
of the rural counties having a considerable black popula- 
tion. The reaction against Reconstruction for some time 
bore against these schools and they have come along 
slowly. When, about 1885, the South entered upon a new 
career of education, the negro schools came more into peo- 
ple's minds; but they have not advanced in proportion to 
the white schools, and they have encountered a lively hostil- 
ity directed particularly against the higher forms of edu- 
cation. 

The present status of the negro common schools may 
be summarized from the report of the Commissioner of Ed- 
ucation for 1906. Taking the whole South together, there 
Avere, in that year, over 2,900,000 colored children five to 
eighteen years old, of whom 1,600,000, or little more than 
half, were enrolled in school, while of the white children of 
school age nearly three fourths were enrolled. Out of 1,- 
600,000 enrolled, the average attendance was 990,000, 
or about a third of the children of school age, while 
of the whites it was 3,000,000, or nearly half the children 
of school age. For the 1,600,000 enrolled negro children, 
there were 28,000 teachers, or 1 to 57; for the 4,500,000 
white children over 100,000 teachers, 1 to 45. The annual 
expenditures for the 6,200,000 children enrolled (white 

310 



NEGEO EDUCATION 

and black) were $46,000,000, but to the negro children 
(about a third of the whole, and least likely to be edu- 
cated otherwise) was assigned about a seventh of this sum. 
To state the same thing in another form, in nearly all the 
Southern states at least twice as much was spent per pupil 
on Whites as on Negroes. 

A part of this disparity is due simply to the fact that 
the superior race produces the larger number of children 
capable of secondary and higher training and has more 
money to carry its children along, to pay their expenses 
and tuition where necessary, in order to give them a start 
in life. That consideration does not account either for 
the very low enrollment or low attendance of negro chil- 
dren. The truth is that the majority of white people, who 
have the sole power of laying taxes and of appropriating 
money for education, think that the Negroes ought not to 
have school advantages equal to those of white children, 
or advancing beyond a common school education. 

The mere statistics of negro schools and attendance 
after all carry with them little information. What kind 
of pupils are they ? What kind of school buildings are pro- 
vided for them ? What is the character of their teachers ? 
Naturally, among both races, many are at work after twelve 
or fourteen years, but the percentages of enrollment and 
attendance are so much less than those of the white people 
that apparently colored children are less likely than white 
to be sent to school and to be kept there when started. 
Though every Northern state without exception has some 
kind of compulsory education, not a single Southern state, 
except Kentucky and Missouri, has enacted it. 

Some personal knowledge of Southern schools, both in 
cities and the country, suggests several reasons why the at- 
tendance is small. Visit this negro wayside school in the 

311 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

heart of the piney woods near Albany, Ga. The build- 
ing is a wretched structure with six glass windows, some of 
them broken; the sky visible between the weatherboards. 
There is one desk in the room, the teacher's, made of rough 
planks; the floor is rough and uneven. Of the forty-four 
children enrolled, none of whom come more than about 
three miles, thirty-two are present on a pleasant day ; six of 
them appear to be mulattoes. They wear shoes and stockings 
and are quiet and well-behaved but sit in the midst of dirt 
on dirty benches. The teacher is a pleasant woman, wife 
of a well-to-do colored man in the neighboring town, but 
apparently untrained. She teaches five months at $35 
a month. Last year there was no school at all in this 
district. 

Enter another school at Oak Grove, Ala. The 
house is a single room, twenty-five feet square; larger 
than is needed, like many of the schoolhouses, because it 
may serve also for church services. There is not a sash in 
any one of the seven windows, each having a hinged shut- 
ter. The teacher has a table, and for the pupils are pro- 
vided several rude benches with or without backs ; the room 
is furnished with a blackboard and is reasonably clean*; 
the teacher, a young man eager and civil, a graduate of a 
neighboring school carried on by the Negroes for them- 
selves, holds five months' school. Take another school near 
Albany, Ga., in a tolerably good schoolhouse built by 
the Negroes themselves with some white assistance, for the 
county commissioners will do no more than offer $100 
to a district that will spend about $300 more on a build- 
ing. The room overcrowded, four or five at a desk; twice 
as many girls as boys; a good teacher who has had some 
normal training; a book for each group of three in the 
reading class ; the lesson about a brutal Yankee officer who 

312 



NEGRO EDUCATION 

compels a little Southern girl to tell where the Confeder- 
ate officer is hiding. The children read well and with ex- 
pression. 

These are probably fairly typical of the rural negro 
schools throughout the South, and better than some. As a 
matter of fact, thousands of negro children have no oppor- 
tunity to go to school, because the commissioners simply 
refuse to provide school in their district; perhaps because 
the number of children is thought too few; perhaps merely 
because they do not wish to spend the money. In a town 
with perhaps 2,000 Negroes there is sometimes only one 
negro teacher. 

Here comes in the effect of the separate school system 
which prevails in every Southern state, in the District of 
Columbia, in Indianapolis, and in parts of New Jersey. 
The system was inaugurated just as soon as the Whites ob- 
tained control of the Reconstruction government after the 
Civil War, and it goes all the way through: seperate 
buildings, separate teachers, separate influences, separate 
accounts. The reasons for it are : first, the belief of white 
parents that negro children, even the little ones, have a 
bad influence on the white children ; second, the conviction 
that mixed schools would break down the rigorous sepa- 
ration of races necessary to prevent eventual amalgamation ; 
third, the blacks are niggers. In cities and towns it adds 
little to the expense to keep up separate buildings and 
corps of teachers, but in rural districts, where the number 
of children is small, the expense of double schools may be 
a serious matter. 

One reason why the schools are poor is that the pupils 
are irregular, and one reason why they are irregular is 
that the schools are poor. The wretched facilities of the 
rural schools, both white and negro, tend to drive chil- 

313 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

dren out ; and the incompetent teachers do not make par- 
ents or children fonder of school. For the white schools 
a supply of reasonably intelligent young men and women is 
now coming forward. As to the Negroes, with few excep- 
tions, ever}^ teacher is a Negro, though appointed by and 
supervised by some white authority ; it is doubtful whether 
half the negro teachers have themselves gone through a 
decent common school education. Many of them are ig- 
norant and uneducated. The superintendent of the town 
schools at Valdosta, Ga., says : " There are to-day outside 
of the cities, not more than one half dozen teachers in 
each county in the state, upon an average, who can hon- 
estly make a license to teach. The custom in most coun- 
ties is to license so many as we are compelled to have to 
fill the schools from among those who make the most 
creditable show upon examination. School commissioners 
do not pretend to grade their papers strictly. If they did 
three-fourths of the negro schools would be immediately 
closed.^' 

Conditions are not much better in the towns, where 
many negro teachers earn only $150 to $200 a year; 
but in the cities the negro teachers are more carefully se- 
lected, for they can be drawn from the local negro high 
schools or the normal schools. But the colored people are 
said to scheme and maneuver to get this teacher out and 
that one in. They have been known to petition against a 
capable and unblemished teacher on the ground that she 
was the daughter of a white man, and it was immoral for 
her to be teaching black children. 

If the negro common schools are inferior to the white, 
this is still more marked in their secondary public schools, 
such as they are. No principle is more deeply ingrained 
in the American people than that it is worth while to spend 

314 



NEGRO EDUCATION 

the necessary money to educate up to about the eighteenth 
year all the young people who show an aptitude, and whose 
parents can get on without their labor. The Southern 
states accept this principle, but for such education the 
Negroes have few opportunities. Out of 151,000 Southern 
young people in public and private high schools, 6,500 high 
school pupils and 2,600 in the private schools are Negroes. 
That is, a third of the population counts a seventeenth 
of the secondary pupils. Most of the so-called negro col- 
leges are made up of secondary and normal pupils who 
get a training very like that of the Northern academies, 
and some favored cities have public high schools for the 
Negroes. This is the case in Baltimore, and was the case 
in New Orleans until about 1903, when the high schools 
were discontinued, on the ground that the Negro could 
not profit by so much education, although the lower 
branches of the high schools were still taught in the upper 
rooms of the negro grammar schools. 

It must not be forgotten that there are more than a 
hundred institutions for training the colored people, which 
draw nothing from the public funds. These schools, in 
part supported by the colored people themselves, in part 
by Northern gifts, which during the last forty years have 
amounted to between thirty and fifty million dollars, are 
usually better than the public schools, and have more op- 
portunities for those lessons of cleanliness and uprightness 
which the Negro needs quite as much as book learning. 
Those schools are a thorn in the side of the South — so much 
so that for years it was hardly possible to get any Southern 
man to act as trustee ; they are supposed to teach the negro 
youth a desire for social equality; they are thought to 
draw the Negroes off from cordial relations with the South- 
ern Whites ; above all, they include the higher institutions 
21 315 



THE SOUTHERN^ SOUTH 

which are credited with spoiling the race with too much 
Greek and Latin. To a considerable degree the schools of 
this type are mulatto schools, probably because the people 
of mixed blood are more intelligent and prosperous, and 
more interested in their children's future; but many of 
them are planted in the darkest part of the Black Belt — 
such as the Penn School in the Sea Islands. Wherever they 
exist, they appeal to the ambition and the conscience of the 
Negro, and help to civilize the race; they are not only 
schools but social settlements. Alongside the earlier schools 
and colleges planted by Northerners in the regular academic 
type, during the last thirty years have arisen first Hamp- 
ton, then Tuskegee, and then many like schools, built up 
on the principle of industrial training, which will be de- 
scribed in the next chapter. 

The Northern schools for the education of the 
Negroes have brought about one of the unpleasant features 
of the Southern question in the boycotting of the Northern 
teachers, both men and women, who have come down to 
teach them. This practice is a tradition from Reconstruc- 
tion times when it was supposed that the Northern teachers 
were training colored youth to assert themselves against 
Whites. They expected only to furnish examples and in- 
citements to the Southern people themselves ; hence a feel- 
ing of bewilderment and grief, because from the very be- 
ginning the white teachers in these institutions have been 
under a social ban the relentlessness of which it is hard 
for a Northerner to believe. An educated and cultivated 
white family has lived in a Southern city, superior intellec- 
tually and morally to most of the community about it ; yet 
no friendly foot ever crossed its threshold. The beautiful 
daughter, easily first in the girls' high school, never ex- 
changed a word with her classmates outside the school, ex- 

316 



NEGRO EDUCATION 

cept when called upon, as she regularly was, to help out her 
less gifted fellows, as an unpaid and unthanked tutor — be- 
cause her father was spending his life in trying to uplift 
the Negro. The attitude of the South toward most of 
those schools is one of absolute hostility. Even an institu- 
tion so favorably regarded in the South as Hampton Insti- 
tute has been prohibited by the Legislature of Virginia 
(which makes it a small money grant) from selling the 
products of its industrial department. 

The negro colleges in the South are far from prosper- 
ous; planted in the day of small things with limited en- 
dowments, frequented by people who have little money to 
pay for tuition, they have been supported from year to year 
by Northern gifts which are not sufficient to keep them 
up to modern demands. Though some of them have toler- 
able buildings, few have adequate libraries, laboratories, or 
staif of specialist instructors. The state institutions of this 
grade open to blacks are nearly all rather low in standards, 
and offer little inducement for academic training ; they are 
either normal or industrial in type. The better off of the 
Negroes send their sons to Northern white colleges where 
they may receive the best instruction but have little contact 
with their fellow students. So far from the number of 
negro college graduates being too great, it is entirely too 
small for the immediate needs of the race. They must 
have educated teachers and trained professional men; the 
negro schools will never flourish without competent teachers 
and supervisors of the negro race. In many respects the 
colleges are the weakest part of negro education. One 
school in which numbers have had good training, Berea 
College, Kentucky, (has now been abandoned under an 
act of the state legislature forbidding the teaching of 
Whites and Negroes together, but an industrial school 

317 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 



1 



of high grade will be provided exclusively for the col- 
ored race. 

As DuBois says : " If, while the healing of this vast 
sore is progressing, the races are to live for many years I 
side by side, united in economic effort, obeying a common 
government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet 
subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper hu- 
man intimacy, — if this unusual and dangerous develop- 
ment is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect 
and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at 
once the delicatest and nicest in modern history. It will 
demand broad-minded, upright men, both white and black, 
and in its final accomplishment American civilization will 
triumph." DuBois calculates that in the twenty-five years 
from 1875 to 1900 there were only 1,200 or 1,300 negro 
graduates from all the colleges open to them North and 
South, an average of about fifty a year out of a race num- 
bering during that period, on the average, six millions. 
Out of this amount about half have become teachers or 
heads of institutions, and most of the rest are professional 
men. 

Many of the academic and normal training schools of 
various grades are situated in the midst of large colored 
populations, and take upon themselves a work similar to 
that of the college settlements in N'orthern cities. Such 
is the flourishing school at Calhoun, Ala., which is in 
the midst of one of the densest and most ignorant Negro 
populations in the South, and besides training the children 
sent to it, it has supervised the work of breaking up the 
land, which is sold to negro farmers in small tracts, thereby 
giving an object lesson of the comfort and satisfaction in 
owning one's own land. Most such schools aim to be 
centers of moral influence upon the community about them. 

318 



NEGEO EDUCATION 

Here^ again, they encounter the hostility of their neighbors 
on the ground that they are putting notions into the heads 
of the Negroes, and are destroying the labor system of the 
community. On the other hand, many of the Whites take 
a warm interest in these schools, although not a single 
one has ever received any considerable gift of money from 
Southern white people. The testimony is general that they 
are well taught, preserve good order, and inculcate decency 
of person and life. 

Probably the most effective argument in favor of negro 
education is the success of Hampton and Tuskegee, two 
endowed schools, practically kept up by Northern benefac- 
tors, which are the great exemplifiers of industrial educa- 
tion. They are successful, both in providing for large 
numbers of students — about 3,000 altogether — and in pro- 
ducing an effect upon the whole South. The number of 
graduates is but a few score a year, and many of them go 
into professions for which they were not directly prepared 
in these schools. But great numbers of men and women 
who have spent only a year or two in these institutions 
carry out into the community the great lesson of self-help ; 
and hundreds of schools and thousands of individuals are 
moved by the example of these two famous schools and 
similar institutions scattered throughout the South. They 
preach a gospel of work ; they hold up a standard of prac- 
ticality ; they are so successful as to draw upon themselves 
the anathemas of men like Thomas Dixon, Jr., who says : 
" Mr. Washington ... is training them all to be masters 
of men, to be independent. ... If there is one thing a 
Southern white man cannot endure it is an educated 
Negro." 

The question is imperative. With all the efforts at edu- 
cation, notwithstanding the great reduction in the per- 

319 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

centage of illiteracy, the number of negro adult men and 
women in the South who are unable to read and write is 
actually greater than at any time since by emancipation 
they were brought within the possibilities of education. 
The actual task grows greater every day, and if the re- 
sources of the South are more than correspondingly in- 
creased, it is still a question how much of them will l)e 
devoted to this pressing need. Education will not do 
everything ; it will not make chaste, honest, and respectable 
men and women out of wretched children left principally 
to their own instincts. Education is at best a palliative, 
but the situation is too serious to dispense even with palli- 
atives. 

Perhaps the first necessity is to improve the character 
and the training of the negro teachers. Both in the rural 
and the city schools appointments are in many cases made 
by white school board men who have little knowledge and 
sometimes no interest in the fitness of their appointees. 
The colleges and industrial schools all have this problem 
in mind. State normal schools for Negroes in many of 
the Southern states try to meet this necessity, but a great 
many of the country teachers, some of them in the expe- 
rience of the writer, are plainly unsuited for the task. Some 
of them are themselves ignorant, few have the background 
of character and intellectual interest which would enable 
them to transmit a moral uplift. 

One of the most serious difficulties of negro education 
is the attendance, or rather nonattendance. Within a 
few weeks after the beginning of school, pupils begin to 
drop out; often perhaps because the teacher cannot make 
the work interesting. One of their own number says: 
" Many of our children do not attend school because our 
teachers are incompetent; because many of the parents 

320 



NEGEO EDUCATION 

simply dislike their teachers; because some parents prefer 
Baptist teachers; because many children have their own 
way about all they do; because many children do not like 
a strict teacher; because some parents contend for a fine 
brick building for the school; because, as a whole, many 
parents are too ignorant and prejudiced and contentious to 
do anything, yet we have enrolled about 150 pupils this 
session in spite of the devil." 

Some of the schools are overcrowded. There have been 
cases where 6 teachers were assigned for 1,800 children, of 
whom 570 enrolled, yet the average earnings of the six 
teachers would not be more than $100 a year. Against 
these instances must be placed a great number of intelligent, 
faithful teachers who make up for some deficiencies of 
knowledge by their genuine interest in their work. 

For negro education as for white, but perhaps with 
more reason, it is urged that the federal government ought 
to come in with its powerful aid. The argument somewhat 
resembles that of the blind Chinese beggar who was sent 
to the hospital where he recovered his sight, and then in- 
sisted that, having lost his livelihood, he must be made 
porter to the hospital. Aside from any claim of right, it 
is true that the problem of elevating the Negroes concerns 
the whole nation, and is a part of the long process of which 
emancipation was the beginning. Federal aid for colored 
schools, however, can never be brought about without the 
consent of the Southern states, and they are not likely to 
ask for or to receive educational funds intended solely for 
the Negroes; while Northern members of Congress are 
not likely to vote for taxing their constituents who already 
pay two or three times as much per capita for education 
as the South, in order to make up the deficiencies of the 
other section. It is impossible to discover any way in 

331 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

which federal aid can be given to the Negroes without re- 
viving sectional animosity ; and it is a fair question whether 
such gifts could be so hedged about that they would not 
lead to a corresponding diminution in the amount spent by 
the Southern states. The Government grants to state ag- 
ricultural colleges and experiment stations inure almost 
wholly to the advantage of the Whites; if a part of that 
money could be devoted to the education of the Negro, it 
might be helpful. 

Several educational trusts created years ago for the 
benefit of the Negroes have now ceased their work. The 
Peabody fund of about three million dollars was much de- 
pleted by the repudiation of the Mississippi and Florida 
bonds, and has now been entirely distributed. For some 
years it was devoted to building up primary teaching on 
condition that the localities benefited should themselves 
spend larger sums. Then it went into normal schools. In 
1882 the Slater fund of one million dollars was given solely 
for the education of Negroes. The General Education 
Board in its allocations to Southern institutions has liber- 
ally remembered several of the negro institutions as well 
as the white. 



CHAPTER XXIII 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 



IN" the two previous chapters white and negro education 
have been described as parts of the social and govern- 
mental system of the South; there, as in the North, 
the tacit presumption is that education is desirable, that it 
is essential for moral and material progress, that both the 
parents and the community must make great sacrifices to 
secure it. White education hardly needs defense in the 
South ; most of the people wish to see the opportunities of 
life open to promising young people, believe in the spread 
of ideas, and look on education as the foundation of the 
republic. 

Does the principle, as in the North, apply to all the 
elements of population ? Is the education of the Negro as 
clearly necessary as that of the White? Should the same 
method apply to the training of the two races? On the 
contrary, there is in most Southern white minds hesitation 
as to the degree of education suitable for the blacks; and 
a widespread disbelief in any but rudimentary training, 
and that to be directed toward industrial rather than in- 
tellectual ends. 

The first objection to negro education is that the race is 
incapable of any but elementary education and that all be- 
yond is wasted effort. Has the Negro as a race an inferior 
intellectual quality, a disability to respond to opportunities ? 

323 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

With all the effort to educate the race, and with due regard 
to the fact that the proportion who can read and write i^ 
rapidly rising, the Negroes are alarmingly ignorant, the 
most illiterate group in the whole United States ; and there- 
fore they need special attention. In addition, they are 
subjected to the smallest degree of home training, and en- 
joy the smallest touch with those concentrated forces of 
public opinion which force the community upward. Some 
of the Negroes seek intellectual life at home, for occa- 
sionally you see a family grouped about the fire with the 
father reading a book to them ; but hardly any of the rural 
people and probably few of the townsmen own a shelf 
of books and magazines and newspapers. Their journalism 
is in general rather crude. A class of patent inside news- 
papers is carried on by the heads of one or the other negro 
order; and they contain good advice, news of the order, 
advertisements of patent hair dressings which " make 
harsh, stubborn, kinky, curly hair soft, pliant and glossy " ; 
and descriptions of the experiments of surgeons in making 
black skin white by the use of X-rays. Some of these 
papers are well edited, and all of them have discovered the 
great secret of modern journalism, which is to put as many 
proper names as possible into the paper. 

One difficulty with the negro newspaper is that it can- 
not fill up entirely with colored news ; and on general ques- 
tions and the progress of the world the regular white news- 
papers, with their greater resources, are certain to be more 
readable. Still, few Negroes outside the cities read either 
weekly or daily papers regularly; and one of the neces- 
sities for raising the race is to cultivate the newspaper 
habit. To be sure, there is a type of highly successful 
white journalism that does not edify the white race. Yet 
even a bad newspaper cannot help telling people what is 

324 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 

going on in the world. In spite of its freight of crime, 
such a paper carries people out of themselves, makes them 
feel a greater interest for mankind, brings in a throng 
of new impressions and experiences, helps to educate them. 

Outside of newspapers the Negroes have access to the 
written works of members of their own race, which are at 
the same time a proof of literary capacity and a means of 
teaching the people. Of course it is always urged that 
such men as Booker Washington, the educator and up- 
lifter; Dunbar, the pathetic humorist; Chesnutt, author of 
stories of Southern life that rival Joel Chandler Harris 
and Thomas Nelson Page; DuBois, who in literary power 
is one of the most notable Americans of this generation; 
Kelly Miller, the keen satirist; and Sinclair, the defender 
of his people — prove nothing as to the genius of the races 
because they are mulattoes; but they and their associates 
are listed among the Negroes, included in the censure on 
negro colleges, and furnish the most powerful argument 
for the education of at least a part of the race. Few men 
of genius among the Negroes are pure blacks; but it is 
not true that the lighter the color the more genius they 
possess. So far as the effects of a prolonged and thorough 
education are concerned, those men from any point of view 
prove that the mulattoes, who are perhaps a fifth of the 
whole, are entitled to a thorough education. Has not Du- 
Bois the right to say: 

" I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the 
color line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, 
where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded 
halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between 
the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I sum- 
mon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they 
come all graciously v^ith no scorn nor condescension. So, 

325 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life 
you grudge us, knightly America ? Is this the life you 
long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? 
Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, be- 
tween Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised 
Land?" 

On the other hand, the history of the last thirty-five 
years proves conclusively that the great mass of negro 
children can assimilate the ordinary education of the com- 
mon schools. Mr. Glenn, recently Superintendent of Edu- 
cation in Georgia, declares that "the negro is . . . 
teachable and susceptible to the same kind of mental im- 
provement characteristic to any other race,'' and Thomas 
Nelson Page admits that the " Xcgro may individually 
attain a fair, and in uncommon instances a considerable 
degree, of mental development." About three fourths of 
the young people have already learned to read. 

Many people intimately acquainted with the race as- 
sert that, although about as quick and receptive as white 
children up to twelve or fourteen years of age, the negro 
children advance no further; that their minds thencefor- 
ward show an arrested development. Certainly anyone who 
visits their schools, city or rural, public or private, is struck 
with the slowness of the average child of all ages to take 
in new impressions, and with the intellectual helplessness 
of many of the older children. Whether this is due to the 
backwardness of the race, or to the uncouthness of home 
life, or to the want of other kinds of stimulus outside of 
school, is hard to determine. That there is any general 
arrested development is contradicted by thousands of capa- 
ble youths, mulatto and full blood. 

The very slowness of the black children is a reason for 
giving them the best educational chance that they can 

326 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 

take. That is why the Southern Education Association 
which met in 1907 passed a unanimous resolution that: 
" We endorse the accepted policy of the States of the South 
in providing educational facilities for the youth of the ne- 
gro race, believing that whatever the ultimate solution of 
this grievous problem may be, education must be an im- 
portant factor in that solution." 

Another point of view is represented by the statement 
of Thomas Nelson Page that the great majority of the 
Southern Whites " unite further in the opinion that edu- 
cation such as they receive in the public schools, so far 
from appearing to uplift them, appears to be without any 
appreciable beneficial effect upon their morals or their 
standing as citizens/' Governor Vardaman, of Mississippi, 
as late as 1908 recommended the legislature to strike out 
all appropriations for negro schools on the ground that 
" Money spent to-day for the maintenance of the public 
school for negroes is robbery of the white man and a 
waste upon the negro. It does him no good, but it does 
him harm. You take it from the toiling white men and 
women ; you rob the white child of the advantages it would 
afford him, and you spend it upon the negro in an effort 
to make of the negro that which God Almighty never in- 
tended should be made, and which man cannot accom- 
plish.'' He asserts that the most serious negro crime is 
due to " The manifestation of the negro's aspiration for 
social equality, encouraged largely by the character of free 
education in vogue, which the State is levying tribute upon 
the white people to maintain." 

In Cordova, S. C, in 1907, a business man who 
had visited a colored school and spoken encouragingly 
to the pupils, felt compelled by public sentiment to print 
an apology and a promise never to do anything so dreadful 

327 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

again. This criticism comes not simply from demagogues 
like Vardaman or weaklings like the Cordovan ; intelligent 
planters will tell you that they are opposed to negro edu- 
cation because it makes criminals; and think their accusa- 
tion proven by instances of forgeries by Xegroes, which of 
course they could not have committed had they been unable 
to write. A superintendent of schools in a Southern city 
holds that even grammar school education unsteadies the 
boys so that they leave home and drift away; though he 
candidly acknowledges that it keeps the girls out of trouble 
and provides a respectable calling as teachers to many 
negro women. 

Side by side with this feeling of disappointment or hos- 
tility, as the case may be, is the conviction of most South- 
ern people that enormous sacrifices have been made for 
the negro schools. Thomas Dixon, Jr., with his accus- 
tomed exactness and candor, wrote a few years ago : " We 
have spent about $800,000,000 on Negro education 
since the War." These figures show a poverty of im- 
agination : it would be just as easy to write " eight thou- 
sand millions '^ as " eight hundred." The estimate of the 
Bureau of Education is that in the thirty-five years since 
1870 about $155,000,000 has been- spent to support com- 
mon schools for the negro race, which is about a fifth of 
the amount spent on the white common schools in the same 
period, and not a hundredth of the supposed present wealth 
of the South; in addition, heavy expenditures are made out 
of the public treasury for secondary and higher education 
in which the Negro has a slender share. 

Another more specious complaint with regard to Negro 
education is that it is an unreasonable burden on the 
Whites to make them pay for negro education, and repeated 
attempts have been made to lay it down as a principle that 

328 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 

the Negroes shall have for their schools only what they pay 
in taxes. Thus Governor Hoke Smith, of Georgia, says: 
" Is it not folly to tax the people of Georgia for the purpose 
of conducting a plan of education for the Negro which 
fails to recognize the difference between the Negro and 
the white man ? Negro education should have reference to 
the Negro's future work, and especially in the rural dis- 
tricts it is practicable to make that education really the 
training for farm labor. If it is given this direction it 
will not be necessary to tax the white man's property for 
the purpose. A distribution of the school fund according 
to the taxes paid by each race would meet the require- 
ments.'^ 

In at least two states this idea has been to some extent 
carried out. In Kentucky the state school fund is appor- 
tioned among the school children without regard to race, 
but for local purposes the Negroes appear to be thrown on 
their own payments. And in Maryland, under various 
statutes from 1865 to 1888, all the taxes collected from 
Negroes were devoted to negro schools, the state adding a 
lump sum per annum. 

This point of view involves a notion of the purpose of 
education and the reasons for public schools so different 
from that which animates the North that it is hard to deal 
with the question impartially. Massachusetts makes the 
largest expenditure per capita of its population in the whole 
Union, almost the largest expenditure per pupil, and cer- 
tainly the largest aggregate expenditure, except the more 
populous states of New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and 
Ohio; Massachusetts spends on schools two fifths as much 
every year as all the fifteen former slaveholding states put 
together. In that state people think that school taxes are 
not money spent but money saved : that they get back 

329 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

every cent of their $17,000,000 a year, several times over, 
in the increased efficiency of the people, in the diminution 
of crime, in the addition to the happiness of life. Schooling 
is insurance, schooling is the savings bank that can't break, 
schooling is that sane kind of poor relief which prevents 
poverty. The last thing which any Massachusetts com- 
munity thinks of reducing is school expenditure ! 

Furthermore, no principle is so ingrained in the North- 
ern mind as that since education is for the public benefit, 
every taxpayer must contribute in proportion to his prop- 
erty. The rich corporations in New York or Pittsburg, 
childless old couples, bachelor owners of great tracts of real 
estate, wealthy bondholders educating their children in 
private schools, never dream of disputing the school tax 
on the ground that they, as individuals, make no demands 
on the school fund. 

Still less would it enter the mind of any Northern 
community to divide itself into social classes, each of which 
should maintain its own schools. Such a proposition would 
go near to bring about a revolution. First of all, the 
non-taxpayer is a taxpayer; it is the pojis asinorum of 
finance that the poor are more heavily taxed in proportion 
to their means than any other class of the community, 
through indirect taxes and the enhanced rents of the real 
estate which they occupy. As a matter of fact, all the 
taxes eventually paid by the Negroes in the South prob- 
ably amount only to a third or a half of the three millions 
or so spent upon their schools. ^Yhat of that? Are the 
Southern states the only communities in the country in 
which a comparatively small part of the population pays 
most of the taxes; it is altogether probable that in Boston 
or New York the payers of nine tenths of the taxes do not 
furnish one tenth of the school children. Wlio educates 

330 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 

the Irish, German, Italian, Jewish, Greek, and Syrian chil- 
dren of those cities? The well-to-do part of the commu- 
nity, and it does it uncomplainingly, with its eyes open, 
gladly. The South likewise is educating the Negroes 
principally for the advantage of the white race, for the 
efficiency of the whole region in which the Whites have the 
greatest stake, and from which they derive the greater bene- 
fit, material and moral. 

One of the most obstinate Southern conventional be- 
liefs, widely held, constantly asserted, and diametrically 
contrary to the facts, is that the Negroes have been spoiled 
by classical education which has totally unfitted them for 
ordinary life. Thus even Murphy holds that " We have 
been giving the Negro an educational system which is but 
ill adapted even to ourselves. It has been too academic, 
too much unrelated to practical life, for the children of 
the Caucasian.^^ The intelligent man on the cars will tell 
you that the negro college graduates with their Greek and 
Latin are spoiling the whole race. Never was there such 
an advertisement of the vigor of college education; since 
the official statistics show that the actual number of 
Negroes studying Greek and Latin in 1906, both in the 
secondary and higher schools (except the public schools), 
was 1,077 men and 641 women, a total of 1,718 persons. 
With some possible additions from those in high schools, 
and higher institutions, the total number of colored people 
who are now taking any kind of collegiate training is not 
above 3,000, of whom only 180 took degrees in 1906 ; there 
are also 4,500 normal students, of whom 1,270 graduated. 
Of professional students there were in all (1906) about 1,- 
900 Negroes, a third of whom were in theology and an- 
other third in medicine. Of negro colleges and technical 
schools and private academies, 127 are enumerated, rang- 
22 331 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ing all the way from the Arkadelphia Baptist Academy 
with 50 students, up to Tuskegee Normal and Indus- 
trial Institute with 1,621 students; but in all such colleges 
those ranked as taking a college course are comparatively 
few. 

These figures throw light on the further conventional 
belief that it is the Northern endowed colleges that have 
made the trouble in the colored race, through efforts to 
teach the colored youth that they were the equals of the 
Whites. By far the greater number of Negroes who are 
really getting training above the secondary grade in the 
South are in the state-sustained institutions — many of 
them, of course, still of low grade; and full credit should 
be given to the South for developing this type of negro 
education, of which the North knows little. State Agri- 
cultural, Normal or Industrial colleges are to be found 
in every former slaveholding state, except Arkansas and 
Tennessee, and together include more than 5,000 stu- 
dents. 

The attacks, chiefly from Southern Whites, upon negro 
college education have of late been transformed into a con- 
troversy as to the relative importance of academic and 
industrial training. The schools of the Tuskegee type fur- 
nished manual work to their students apparently not in 
the first instance because it was thought to be educative, 
but because they had to earn part of their living. This is 
apparently the main source of the bitter hostility of Dixon 
to the work of Tuskegee. The form his criticism takes 
is that Booker Washington, instead of teaching the Negro 
to be a good workman, is training him to take independent 
responsibility ; that if he is a good workman he will com- 
pete with the Whites, and if he is a good leader he will aim 
to make the Negroes a force in the community. This line 

332 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 

of objection to education of the black is really based upon 
the belief that they are a race capable of education, that 
the Negro is not a clod, but may be improved by the sys- 
tematic efforts of superior men ; he has in him the potenti- 
ality of vital force. 

Meanwhile throughout the country has been running a 
current in favor of a more practical education than that 
furnished by the ordinary schools, and the result has been 
the Teclmical, Manual Training, and Commercial schools 
scattered throughout the Northern states. The controversy 
is not at all confined to questions of negro education. The 
Southern white people have been well inclined toward the 
new type of education for Negroes, although on the whole 
much preferring the academic type for their own children. 

A hot discussion has raged as to which of the two sys- 
tems is most necessary to the Negro. The champions of 
the academic side dwell upon the right of the Negro to the 
same type of education as the white man. In many white 
minds lies a lurking feeling that academic negro training 
leads to discontent with present conditions; and that in- 
dustrial training is more likely to bring about contentment 
with the things that are. In fact, both types are most nec- 
essary. The fifty millions poured into the South by North- 
ern generosity would have been worth while if they had 
done no more than maintain a Hampton which could train 
a Booker Washington. His ideas of thrift, attention to 
business, building decent houses, putting money into banks, 
are ideals specially needed by the negro race ; but they also 
need the DuBois ideal of a share in the world's accumulated 
learning ; of the development of their minds ; of preparation 
to educate their fellows. That a supply must be kept up 
of people acquainted with the humanities, having some 
knowledge of literature, able to express themselves cogently, 

333 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

competent to train the succeeding generations, is as true 
for the negro race as for an}^ other ; if it is a low race It 
has the greater need for high training for its best mem- 
bers. 

The two difficulties with manual training for either 
Whites or Negroes are, first, that it may be simply practice 
in handicrafts, without intimate knowledge of tools or 
processes, possessing no more educative value than the ap- 
prenticeship of a carpenter or a blacksmith. The other 
danger is that the manual part will be dilettante ; and any- 
one who has ever visited any large industrial school for 
Whites realizes how hard it is to keep students busy with 
things that actually tell. The weekly hours available for 
shop work where there are large classes are too few to in- 
duce skill. Hence manual training may be simply a means 
of keeping young men and women in elevating associations 
for a series of years, without much positive education. The 
success of Hampton and Tuskegee and like institutions is 
due to a judicious mixture of book learning and hand 
learning, backed up by the personality of the founders, 
General Armstrong in Virginia and Booker Washington in 
Alabama, and of their successors and aids. 

Against both industrial and academic training many 
people in the South feel a strong prejudice, because they 
believe that both tend to produce leaders who may dan- 
gerously organize the fellows of their race, A favorite 
form of slander has been to charge that the graduates of 
colleges furnish the criminals, and practically the worst 
criminals, of the negro race. Never was there a more 
senseless or a more persistent delusion. The total num- 
ber of male graduates of all the Southern colleges during 
the last forty years is not above two thousand, besides 
perhaps five hundred graduates of Northern colleges who 

334 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 

have found their way into the South. Many of those in- 
stitutions have kept track of their graduates and are able 
to assert that the cases of serious crime among them are 
remarkably few, no more in proportion probably than 
among the graduates of Southern and Northern colleges 
for Whites. The moral effect of the colleges among Negroes 
is in the same direction as among Whites ; the students in- 
clude the more determined of the race or the children of 
the more determined. The negro college students are still 
only about one in one thousand of the children and young 
people of the race. The total number of living graduates 
of negro colleges or other institutions of college grade are 
not one in two thousand of the Negroes in the South. 

It is true that even that number find it hard to estab- 
lish themselves in professions or callings which can re- 
ward them for the sacrifices and efforts of their education. 
The negro doctors and la^^ers have almost no white prac- 
tice and not the best of negro practice, but there is an 
opening for thousands of Negroes in the development of the 
education of their people. The thousandth of the race in 
secondary schools and the two thousandth or more in col- 
leges are enough to prove that a large number of individuals 
in the race are capable of and ought to have the advan- 
tages of higher training. 

The denial to the Negroes of public secondary educa- 
tion at the expense of the state practically means that 
most of them will not have it at all. It is denied on the 
ground that it unfits boys and girls for life — exactly the 
argument which has been unsuccessfully brought against 
schools of that grade in the Northern states. It is denied 
on the ground that beyond twelve years of age most of 
the Negroes are stationary and cannot profit by a secondary 
education, a conclusion which does not seem justified by 

335 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

the experience of the few high schools and the numerous 
private and benevolent schools. Still more serious, the de- 
nial of secondary education means that the Negroes are 
deprived of the most obvious means of training for 
teachers of their own race. 

In the last analysis most of the objections to negro 
education come down to the assertion that it puts the race 
above the calling whereunto God hath appointed it. The 
argument goes back to the unconscious presumption that 
the Negro was created to work the white man's field, and 
that even a little knowledge makes him ambitious to do 
something else. 

One thing is certain : that no community can afford to 
neglect the academic side of education. The schools are 
to many people the only and the final appeal to the higher 
side of life, the only touch with the world's stock of great 
thoughts. The accusation is brought against the best 
Northern city schools that they are not practical, because 
they deal too much with literature and history and science. 
The negro child, like the white child, needs to have its 
mind aroused to the large things in the world; needs the 
education of thinking, as well as of learning; as DuBois 
puts it : " To seek to make the blacksmith a scholar is 
almost as silly as the more modern scheme of making the 
scholar a blacksmith ; almost, but not quite." 

On the side of the Negro there are other complaints. 
One is that his education has not had a fair trial ; that the 
dominant South which lays and expends the taxes has not 
dealt with the Negro on an equal footing with white chil- 
dren ; that the per capita expenditure on the black children 
in school is probably not more than a third that for white 
children; that the negro schools have often been exploited 
by white politicians who have put in their own favorites 

336 



OBJECTIONS TO EDUCATION 

as teachers; that even where the best intentions prevail, 
the schools are manned by incompetent teachers; nowhere 
do the rural colored people enjoy an education to the de- 
gree and with the kind of teachers and appliances common 
in the country districts of the North ; the race can hardly 
be spoiled by education, for it has never had it, not for a 
single year. Only about a third of the negro children are 
at school on a given school day. Few of their rural schools 
hold more than five months, many not more than three, 
some not at all ; and in from sixty to one hundred days in 
the year, irregularly placed, with teachers on the average 
not competent for the exceedingly elementary work that 
they do, the wonder is that children ever go a second day 
or acquire the rudiments of learning; yet many of them 
learn to read fluently, to write a good hand, and to do 
simple arithmetical problems. A race must have some in- 
tellectual quickness to pick up anything out of such a poor 
system. The arguments in favor of negro education have 
so far been convincing to every Southern community, since 
negro common schools are maintained and considerable 
amounts are spent for secondary and higher education. 

The arguments against negro education destroy each 
other ; they assume both that the Negro is too little and too 
much affected by the education that he receives. On one 
side we are told that he is incapable of anything more than 
the rudiments ; on the other side, that education is a potent 
force making the Negro dangerous to the world. The in- 
competent can never be made dangerous by training into 
competence. Education cannot change the race weaknesses 
of the Negro; but it can give a better chance to the best 
endowed. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

POSTULATES OF THE PROBLEM 

THAT the South confronts a complexus of problems 
difficult and almost insoluble is clear to all onlook- 
ers, Xorthern or Southern, candid or prejudiced. 
So far this book has undertaken to deal rather with condi- 
tions than with remedies, to state questions without trying 
to answer them, to separate so far as may be the real aspi- 
rations and progress of the Southern people of both races 
from conventional beliefs and shop-worn statements which 
overlie the actualities. 

Such an analysis of the physical and human elements 
of Southern life prepares the way for a discussion of a 
different nature. Shall the thriftless part of the Southern 
community remain at its present low average standard of 
productivity? Are the lower Whites and the still lower 
Negroes moving upward, however slowly? Can the two 
races come to an understanding which will mean peace in 
our time? Are there positive remedies for a state of 
things admittedly alarming? Any attempt to answer these 
questions means some repetition or restatement of things 
already treated at greater length. A first step may well 
be to summarize the whole Southern problem as it presents 
itself to the writer's mind. 

( 1 ) The South as a whole, on any basis of material ad- 
vancement, is below the average of other parts of the Union 

338 



POSTULATES OF THE PROBLEM 

and of several foreign countries; it is poor where it ought 
to be rich; it needs economic regeneration. 

(2) Measured by intellectual standards also the white 
South is below the other sections of the Union; the high 
standing of its leaders does not bring up the average of 
the more numerous elements. Any radical improvement, 
therefore, must include the uplift of the lower stratum of 
Whites. 

(3) The South is divided between two races, one of 
which is distinctly inferior to the other, not only in what 
it now does, but in the potentialities of the future. 

(4) The lower race is so far behind, and so likely to 
lag indefinitely, that it is necessary for the welfare of the 
community that the two be kept separate; and this stern 
edict applies not only to the pure African race, but also to 
the two millions of mixed bloods, many of whom in apti- 
tude and habits of thought are practically white men. 

(5) Both these races are improving, the Whites in 
great numbers and rapidly; fewer of the Negroes propor- 
tionally, and more slowly. 

(6) The criminality of both races, and especially the 
violent criminality of the Negroes, brings into the contro- 
versy an element of personal rage and fear. 

(7) Partly by superior abilities, partly by an inherited 
tradition, partly for tlie defense of the community, the 
white race dominates in every department of social, indus- 
trial, and political life ; it owns most of the property ; makes 
the laws for the black man ; furnishes for him the machin- 
ery of government and of justice; and inexorably excludes 
him from both the social and political advantages of the 
community. 

(8) This race division interferes with the American 
principle of equality — that is, the equal right of every man, 

339 



THE SOUTHEEX SOUTH 

woman, and child to do the best thing that his abilities and 
training allow, the inferior doing the best in his stratum, 
the superior the better best of his class. 

(9) The two races do not live together harmoniously. 
The Whites fear some kind of negro domination — the 
Negroes resent the complete control by the Whites; actual 
collisions are rare, but there is a latent race hostility. 

(10) The white people, though they assume sole re- 
sponsibility for whatever adjustment is made, know little 
of the private life of the best Negroes, and exercise small 
direct influence on the lower race. Hence the ordinary 
agencies of uplift — the church, the school, and contact with 
superior minds — are not brought into operation. 

(11) The main reason for this want of touch with the 
Negroes is an apprehension that any common understand- 
ing will assist a social equality which might lead to mis- 
cegenation. 

The Southern problem, therefore, to state it in a sen- 
tence, is how twenty million Whites and ten million Ne- 
groes in the Southern states shall make up a community in 
which one race shall hold most of the property, and all the 
government, and the other race shall remain content and 
industrious; in which one gets most of the good things 
of life and the other does most of the disagreeable work; 
in which the superior members of the inferior race shall 
accept all its disadvantages; in which one race shall al- 
ways be at the top and the other forever at the bottom ; yet 
in which there shall be peace and good will. 

To these conditions, discouraging, hard, implacable to 
innocent people, out of accord with the usual American 
principles, any effective remedy must nevertheless adjust it- 
self. Practically all Southern people agree that the ques- 
tion is alarming, but they are at odds among themselves as 

340 



POSTULATES OF THE PROBLEM 

to the remedy ; and they may be roughly divided into the 
intolerant, the discouraged, and the moderate. 

(I) Examples of passionate violence are plenty, and 
Professor J. W. Garner, a Southerner, suggests some rea- 
sons for their abundance : " Next to the difficulties arising 
mainly from the changed industrial conditions in the 
South and their resulting effect upon the character of the 
black race, the most serious obstacle in the way of main- 
taining harmonious relations between the two races is the 
persistent, ill-timed, and often intemperate agitation of the 
race question by a certain class of politicians lately sprung 
up in the South, whose chief stock in trade is the race is- 
sue. Their method consists in working upon the sympa- 
thies of a certain class of whites by appealing to their 
passions and prejudices, by dwelling upon the brutality and 
savagery of the negro, by conjuring up imaginary dangers 
of negro supremacy, by exaggerating real dangers and in 
every conceivable way exalting the negro problem, as a 
political issue, to a position out of all proportion to its real 
importance." 

The truth of this statement may be illustrated from 
the published conclusions of some writers and speakers who 
are representative of the most radical type of Southern 
feeling. For instance, Hoke Smith, Governor of Georgia 
in 1908, has declared that "the development made by the 
Negro in the South came through the institution of slavery, 
from the control of an inferior race by a superior race. 
I believe that control was absolutely necessary for the de- 
velopment which the Negro made. The continuation of 
control is, in a measure, necessary to retain for the great 
mass of Negroes the progress made by them while in slav- 
ery." 

(II) Hoke Smith is far from representing the general 

341 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

or the average view in the South. Some of the best spirits 
there who feel the responsibility of their race are at their 
wit's end over the whole question and see no way out of 
the difficulty. Thus a lawyer of Birmingham, Ala., writes : 
" If my heart did not go out for the Negro, as a human be- 
ing, or I cared less for my God and an earnest wish to 
walk in His ways, I would kill the Negro or die trying. 
God must intend that TIME shall work out His ways 
and not the men of my generation, for after a longer life 
than most, and all of it spent with and among the Negroes, 
I give it up. . . . Credit the Southern people with pre- 
serving the Negro, with teaching him Christ, with good 
will. . . . Education will do some good — perhaps more 
than I believe, but I verily believe that we must have 
the Negro all born again before we can teach him what 
to do.'' 

(Ill) Of the more hopeful group of reflective men in 
the South there are many spokesmen, who suggest various 
sorts of remedies not always in accord. 

Ex-Congressman William H. Fleming, of Georgia, puts 
it that " We do not know what shifting phases this vexing 
race problem may assume, but we may rest in the conviction 
that its ultimate solution must be reached along the lines 
of honesty and justice. Let us not in cowardice or want 
of faith needlessly sacrifice our higher ideals of private 
and public life. Race differences may necessitate social 
distinction. But race differences cannot repeal the moral 
law. . . . The foundation of the moral law is justice. Let 
us solve the negro problem by giving the negro justice 
and applying to him the recognized principles of the moral 
law. This does not require social equality. It does not 
require that we should surrender into his inexperienced 
and incompetent hands the reins of political government. 

342 



POSTULATES OF THE PROBLEM 

But it does require that we recognize his fundamental 
rights as a man/' 

Senator John Sharp Williams, of Mississippi, protests 
against " Indiscriminate cursing of the whole negro race, 
good and bad alike included. . . . Above all, remember 
this: it is not the educated negro who commits unspeak- 
able crime; he knows the certain result. It is the brute 
whose avenues of information are totally cut off.'' 

Leroy Percy, of Greenville, Miss., pleads for protection 
of the black man : " Daily, in recognition of the weakness 
of human nature, the prayer goes up from millions to a 
higher power : ' Deliver me from temptation — temptation 
which I cannot face and overcome I pray Thee to deliver 
me from.' There is no greater temptation known to man 
than the hourly, daily, yearly dealing with ignorant, trust- 
ing people. ... So justice, self-interest, the duty which 
we owe to ourselves and those who follow us, all demand 
that we should not permit to go unchallenged, should not 
acquiesce in the viciously erroneous idea that the negro 
should be kept in helpless ignorance." 

From this summary of general views it is evident that 
even the most moderate white men pleading for the rights 
of their black neighbors practically all tacitly accept cer- 
tain postulates as to any possible remedies, which they be- 
lieve to be quite beyond discussion and which may be ana- 
lyzed as follows: 

(I) The first is the dominance of the white race, 
which will not surrender any of the present privileges. As 
Page puts it : " The absolute and unchangeable superiority 
of the white race — a superiority, it appears to him, not 
due to any mere adventitious circumstances, such as su- 
perior educational and other advantages during some cen- 
turies, but an inherent and essential superiority, based on 

343 



THE SOUTHEElSr SOUTH 

superior intellect, virtue, and constancy. He does not be- 
lieve that the Negro is the equal of the White, or ever 
could be the equal." That means that the low Negro is 
inferior to the low White, the average Negro to the average 
White, and the superior Negro, however high his plane, 
moral and intellectual, is also to be put into a position of 
permanent inferiority to the higher Whites. Because in- 
ferior morally and mentally, he is held also in political in- 
feriority. The South does not intend that even intelligent 
and educated Negroes shall have a share in making or ad- 
ministering the laws. 

(II) Partly from a sense of its own superiority, partly 
from a disdain of a formerly servile race, chiefly from a 
well-founded belief that amalgamation would be a great 
misfortune for the community, the South is determined 
that there shall be no legalized admixture of the races. 
That miscegenation is still going on in an unknown de- 
gree heightens the determination that it shall at least be 
put under the ban of law; the very danger makes the 
South more determined that the races shall be kept sep- 
arate. 

(III) The dominant white Southerners are further ab- 
solutely determined that any settlement of the question 
shall come from their volition; and that means that the 
Southern Negro is not expected to exercise anything more 
than a mild academic influence. The character of the 
Negroes, their thriftlessness or industry, their crime or 
virtue, their stupidity or their intelligence, may deflect the 
white mind one way or another; their preferences, outside 
the iron fence which the South has erected round the ques- 
tion, will receive some attention; but they will have to 
accept what tlie white people assign to them. 

(IV) The South is as yet little awakened to the idea 

34-1 



POSTULATES OF THE PROBLEM 

that the status of the lower Whites is a part of the whole 
race problem. Inasmuch as the Poor White is emerging 
from seclusion and poverty, people do not sufficiently 
realize that he needs education, intellectual and moral; 
that his passions, his animal instincts, his violence stand 
in the way of the uplift of both races. 

(V) The North is expected by the South not to act 
by legislation or any other active method in behalf of the 
Negro. The Southerners in general consider the Fifteenth, 
or suffrage Amendment, to be an affront, which they avoid 
by shifty clauses in their constitutions and would repeal if 
they could. Some Southerners resent even inquiry about 
the South, and apparently remember how their fathers re- 
ceived visiting abolitionists. 

(VI) It would, however, be a great injustice to the 
immense number of broad-minded people in the South to 
leave the impression that nobody down there welcomes in- 
vestigation or reads criticisms. Upon the negro question 
in general there are two different and opposing Southern 
points of view. The one-sided and arrogant statements of 
the Vardamans, the Dixons, the Graveses, and the Tillmans 
have no right to call themselves the voice of the South, 
in the face of the appeals to common justice and American 
principles of fair play that flow from the pens of the 
Bassetts, the Murphys, the Mitchells, the Flemings, and the 
Percys. It is a happy omen that the South is divided 
upon its own question; for it means that the taboo has 
been taken off discussion ; that Southern men may honestly 
differ on the question of the rights and the character of 
the Negro. 

On the one side is a numerous class of Whites, some 
coarse and ignorant, others of power and vitality, including 
many small farmers and managers of plantations, and also 

345 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

a large element in the towns, who are not much interested 
in the uplift of the Whites and do not wish well to tlie 
Negro, but are full of a blind hostility to the negro race 
and take the ground that this is a white man's government, 
and accept the Negro only as a tool for their use. 

On the other side stand a great part of the high-bred, 
well-educated and masterful element ; the people who count 
in the church, the club and university, the pulpit and the 
bench; people who have a material interest and genuine 
public spirit in providing for the future of their own com- 
monwealth. In general the best people in the South, the 
most highly trained, most public-spirited, most religious, 
wealthiest, and most responsible people wish well to the 
Negro. The plantation owner, the manufacturer, the rail- 
,road manager, want efficient laborers; the minister wants 
God-fearing people; the judge wants law-abiding men; 
the educator wants good schools; they all want to raise 
the community, the bottom as well as the top. How far 
is the superior class in the South to control the action of 
legislatures and the movement of public sentiment, and 
the behavior of those of a ruder cast? Which of these 
two classes speaks for the South? 



CHAPTEK XXV 

THE WRONG WAY OUT 

EXCEPT within the postulates stated in the last 
chapter, there can be no rational expectation of 
improvement of race relations in the South. Even 
within those conditions many suggestions are from time to 
time made which are out of accord with white and negro 
character, with the physical conditions, or with the general 
trend of American life. Before coming to practical reme- 
dies, it is necessary to examine and set aside these no- 
thorouglifares. 

First of all, can the Southern race question be solved 
by any action of the North? The Reconstruction amend- 
ments with the clause authorizing Congress to enforce them 
by " appropriate legislation " seem intended to give the fed- 
eral government power to protect the Negro against either 
state legislation or individual action; but the Supreme 
Court in the Civil Rights decision of 1883 held that 
the action of Congress under those amendments was con- 
fined to meeting positive official action by state govern- 
ments. The Fourteenth Amendment provides for a spe- 
cial penalty in case of deprivation of political rights, by 
reducing the representation in Congress of the states which 
limit their suffrage. Any such legislation must be general 
in terms and would therefore apply to the Northern states 
in which there are educational or tax qualifications. Be- 
23 347 



THE SOUTHEEJ^ SOITTH 

yond that difficulty is the remembered ill effect of Eecon- 
struction laws, and the conviction in the North that th^ 
negro problem is not one simply of race hostility and 
definition of rights — that the Negroes are in many ways 
a menace. To take the matter a second time out of the 
hands of the people on the ground, even though they are 
not solving their own problems, would mean a storm in 
Congress, a weight on the administration, possibly a con- 
test with the Supreme Court, which no responsible North- 
ern public man likes to contemplate. 

Through the control of Congress over federal elections 
there is another opportunity to interfere in behalf of the 
Negro, but the federal laws put on the statute book in 
Reconstruction times were repealed in 1894; and nobody 
now proposes to renew them. By the recent experience of 
the nation in the Philippines, Porto Rico, and Cuba, a les- 
son has been taught of the difficulty of handling non-Euro- 
pean races. The nation begins to doubt the elevating power 
of self-government. For whatever reason, there is no evi- 
dence of any intention in the North to make the Negro the 
ward of the nation. The writer is one of those who believe 
that any general federal legislation would revive friction 
between the. sections, would sharpen the race feeling in 
the South, and in the end could accomplish little for the 
uplift of the Negro; even federal aid to education could 
hardly be so managed as to keep up the feeling of white 
responsibility from which alone proper education of the 
Negro can be expected. 

Is there any likelihood of a private propaganda in be- 
half of the Negro like that of the abolitionists? A con- 
siderable class of Northern people have a warm sense of 
resentment at what they think the injustice and cruelty of 
the superior race, especially in the withdrawal of the suf- 

348 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

frage by state constitutional amendments; and there is a 
lively interest in the education of Negroes and in work 
among the Poor Whites. A propaganda, with societies, 
public meetings, journals, and a literature is, however, no 
longer possible — the North has too much on its own hands 
in curing the political diseases of its cities, in absorbing 
the foreigners; like Congress, it recognizes that the South 
is sincere, even if somewhat exaggerated, in its nervousness 
about the Negroes. The most that can be expected of 
Northern individuals in the way of bettering Southern con- 
ditions is attempts like that of this volume to get into the 
real nature of the problems and to offer good advice. 

Notwithstanding the horror felt toward amalgamation, 
from time to time in unexpected Southern quarters re- 
appears the suggestion that it is impossible for the two 
races to live alongside each other separate, and that the 
logical and unavoidable outcome is fusion ; that the relent- 
less force of juxtaposition is too much for law or prejudice 
or race instinct. Over and over again one is told that no- 
where in history is there an example of two races living 
side by side indefinitely without uniting. This is not his- 
torically true; Mohammedans and Hindoos (originally of 
the same race) have lived separate hundreds of years in 
India; Boers and Kaffirs have been side by side for near 
a century ; the English colonists and the American Indians 
were little intermixed. Amalgamation could only be ac- 
complished by a change in white sentiment about as prob- 
able as the Mormonization of the Northern Whites ; and if 
it were possible, it would lead to a new and worse race 
question, the Clival ry of a mixed race occupying the whole 
South against a white race in the rest of the country, which 
would make all present troubles seem a pleasant interlude. 
Amalgamation as a remedy welcomed by the Southern 

349 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

Whites is unthinkable; as a remedy against their convic- 
tions, brought about by time, it is highly unlikely. 

At the other extremity is the idea, now more than a 
century old, that the way to get rid of the race question is 
to remove one of the races altogether. This notion of cur- 
ing the patient by sending him to a hospital for incurables 
goes back to 1775. Jefferson favored it; the Colonization 
Society organized it in 1816, and in the forty years from 
1820 to 1860 succeeded in sending about ten thousand 
Xegroes to Liberia. Abraham Lincoln favored it. It is 
often suggested nowadays. This plan, if it could be car- 
ried out, would so completely relieve the immediate diffi- 
culties that it deserves the most careful consideration. 

The first objection at the outset is ten million objec- 
tions — namely, the Negroes themselves, who have never 
taken kindly to expatriation, for the simple reason that it 
is flying to evils that they know not of. The second diffi- 
culty is to find a place to receive the exiles. Experiments 
in the West Indies, in Central America, and in Africa have 
all been failures. No European country or colonies will 
welcome people sent away on the ground that they are 
inimical to white civilization; and the settlements of 
American Negroes in savage Africa have been entire fail- 
ures. As has been shown above, Liberia, after nearly 
ninety years of existence, has no influence on the back 
country; its trade is scanty, its health is depleted, and its 
conditions are in every way less favorable to physical and 
moral well-being than those of the United States. 

Then follows the financial difficulty; to be sure a cor- 
respondent of a Georgia newspaper suggests : " Let the 
government appropriate $20,000,000 for five successive 
years each for deportation, judiciously forcing off first the 
ages from eighteen to forty-five, as far as can be done with- 

350 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

out too violent a separation of dependent ages, and five 
years will substantially settle the exodus. All separations 
can be reunited in a few years and not a negro's heart 
broken/" But a single hundred millions would be only a 
drop in the bucket. To bring over tlie ten million for- 
eigners now in the United States, and get them started in 
a country abounding in work and opportunities, has prob- 
ably averaged a cost of a hundred dollars a head, or one 
thousand millions. The thing must be done completely, 
if at all; for from the point of view of its advocates, to 
expatriate a part of the race would be like cutting out a 
portion of a cancer; and where are you going to find, say, 
a thousand million dollars to carry away ten million people 
upon the proceeds of whose continued labor in America 
you must depend for the Southern share of the money? 

In the next place, would a world which still has tears 
for the Acadians deported from Nova Scotia in 1755, which 
is aroused by the banishment of political suspects to Si- 
beria, be impressed with the high civilization of a nation 
which would send ten million people to their death in a 
continent where as yet neither Briton, Frenchman, Portu- 
guese, or German has ever been able to establish any con- 
siderable colony of European emigrants? If the superior 
race, with all its resources, prudence, and medical skill can- 
not live in Africa, what would become of ten million 
Negroes deported on the plea that they were not capable 
of participating in the white man's civilization? Though 
descended from Africans there is no reason to suppose 
that they have transmitted immunity from the deadly 
tropical diseases. 

Again, there is not a state, city, or county populous with 
Negroes in the South which would not resent, and if need 
be resist, the sudden taking away of its laborers. When- 

351 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

ever the question is brought to an issue, the Southern people 
admit that, with all the race difficulties, the Negro does 
raise the cotton and drive the mule; and without him the 
white man must take the hoe and the reins. As John 
Sharp Williams puts it: "The white people of the South 
do not want to hasten the departure of the good negroes; 
. . . whenever you suggest that he leave the Southern 
darky replies in Scriptural phrase, ' Ask me not to leave 
thee.' They are here, and they are going to remain here 
so long as there is a cotton field in sight." The people who 
preach expatriation, deportation, elimination, or whatever 
they choose to call it, are not the people who employ the 
Negro or wish him well, or would be pleased to see him 
succeed in any hemisphere. 

A milder suggestion is that the essential Negro be 
slowly and quietly replaced by somebody else. What some- 
body else? Shall it be Northerners? Senator Williams, 
of Mississippi, says : " I would like to see established a 
great land company with a capital of about a million 
dollars, to buy lands in the cotton States and sell them 
out to home-seeking immigrants on a ten years' instalment 
plan." In 1907 the Southern press was convinced that a 
great flow of immigration had set in from the North, 
but in reality outside of Florida and Texas nearly all 
colonies of Northerners have been unsuccessful, though 
there is a slow stream of people, partly from the Northwest, 
who take up farms in the South and mix with the South- 
ern white population. These people are prone to be dis- 
satisfied with the schools; they are in despair over the 
wretched domestic service ; the women are filled with terror 
by the lynchings and by the frequent cause of them; the 
newcomers dislike the Negroes more than the Southern- 
born people dislike them, and cannot be depended upon to 

352 



4 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

remain a permanent part of the population. In any case, 
they do not replace the negro laborer for wages. 

The only hope of a substitute population of plantation 
hands is in the foreign immigrants, who have been described 
in a previous chapter, and of whom, up to 1909, the South 
seems to have expected a brisk influx. The federal gov- 
ernment even set out to build immigrant stations in Charles- 
ton and Savannah. But in 1907 all the Southern ports 
(excepting Baltimore) together received only 21,000 out of 
1,300,000. To-day the whole scheme is a failure and there 
is no prospect of importing large numbers of foreigners to 
work for wages. A member of Congress from Mississippi 
recently declared from his seat in the House that there 
was a conspiracy of federal and Italian officials to prevent 
Italians from coming into his state. 

The first reason for the failure of the promising plan 
is the many undoubted cases, and the more rumored and 
reported instances, of peonage of white men. In the sec- 
ond place the Italians, who have been chiefly relied upon, 
have no intention of spending their lives and bringing up 
their children as plantation laborers ; they work so well and 
are so profitable to both the plantation owners and them- 
selves that after a few years they save money enough to 
do something that they like better, and that is the end of 
their service on other people's land. The experience of 
South Carolina in 1906, detailed in the chapter on Immigra- 
tion, seems conclusively to prove that most foreigners pre- 
fer the North because they think they are better treated 
there. 

The fundamental difficulty with the whole plan of im- 
migration is that a great many people in the South be- 
lieve that the average foreigner is an undesirable member 
of the community. They have no familiarity with that 

353 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

grinding-down process by which even unpromising races 
are transformed into Americans. They read of the 
" Black Hand/' which is not very different from some 
forms of the old Ku Klux Klan; of the Vendetta, which 
can be paralleled in the Southern mountains; and they 
show little willingness to receive even the better foreign 
elements on equal terms. It is a fair question whether if 
the Italians, for example, should come to have a majority 
of votes in Louisiana they would ever be permitted to 
elect and inaugurate a governor out of their own number ; 
whether the phrase "White man's government" does not 
apply as much against the " Dago " as against the Negro. 

If the Negroes cannot be replaced, is it not possible to 
segregate them into districts of their own? For forty 
years a process has been going on by which the black 
counties grow blacker and the white counties become whiter ; 
Negroes move into the counties where there is most work 
and therefore the greatest number of laborers, and the 
Whites gradually move out of the districts in which the 
Negroes are very numerous. Could not that process be 
carried still farther ? Some people in despair predict that 
the Whites will eventually find their way into the West 
and Northwest, leaving the fruitful South to the Negro. 
Although there is a steady drift of white people out of the 
Southern states, it is of the same kind as the movement 
from New England and the Middle states to the West, 
and the Whites have not the slightest intention of aban- 
doning their section; buildings go up, mills appear, sky- 
scrapers intensify the city, and in every Southern state the 
Whites grow richer and more powerful. 

The desired result might be brought about if the 
Negroes would move to other parts of the Union, and much 
is made of the present drift into the Northern cities, but the 

35i 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

conditions of life are not favorable to them there, and their 
number is only kept up by new immigrations. Booker 
Washington advises the Negro to stay in the South because 
" The fact that at the North the Negro is confined to al- 
most one line of employment often tends to discourage and 
demoralize the strongest who go from the South, and to 
make them an easy prey to temptation." Many of the keen- 
est observers in the South desire that the Negroes should 
spread through the country, partly to relieve the pressure 
in the South, and partly in the conviction that it would 
furnish an object lesson to the Northern people of the dis- 
advantage of the presence of Negroes. Whatever the num- 
ber of emigrant Negroes out of the South, the number left 
there goes on steadily increasing from decade to decade; 
and whenever they show a disposition to leave in large num- 
bers, the Southerners oppose and resist, because they see 
no hope of supplying -their place with any other than more 
negro laborers. 

Could the two races divide the land into districts? 
Such a separation is favored both by Bishop Turner, a 
negro leader, and by John Temple Graves, of Atlanta, a 
negro hater, and there are a few examples of such sepa- 
rate communities. Many white counties and a few white 
towns will not admit Negroes; and in perhaps half a 
dozen colored villages no white man lives. Here is per- 
haps an opportunity for considerably reducing race fric- 
tion, for there is no reason to suppose that such separate 
towns' go backward in civilization; and they give oppor- 
tunities for negro business and professional men, which 
are important for the encouragement of the best members 
of the race. The most serious practical objection is, how- 
ever, that such towns take away laborers, actual or poten- 
tial, from the white plantations; and the industrial cotton 

355 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

system depends on keeping those Negroes on other peo- 
ple's land. 

A broader proposition is phrased by Eeed in the 
" Brother's War " — " Let us give the negro his own State 
in our union. . . . We are rich enough and have land 
enough to give the negro this State^ which is due from 
us. His especial need is to exercise political and civil priv- 
ileges, in his own community, all the way up from the town 
meeting to congress." Possibly this remedy might have 
been applied forty years ago, but it is now absolutely un- 
workable. When Eeed suggests that the Negro be allowed 
to take over some state and carry it on as a negro com- 
munity, the instant question is, which state? Louisiana 
will not allow her laborers to go en masse to Texas; and 
Texas would drive them back with shotguns from the 
border if they tried to move. The blackest states have 
the least disposition to become blacker, the lighter states 
are just as determined to remain light; and since there is 
no longer any great area of good land not taken up by 
anybody, colonization of the Negro within the limits of 
the United States is impossible. 

Could the desired result of keeping Whites and Negroes 
from too confining a contact be reached by a less drastic 
method? A favorite suggestion eloquently championed by 
Grady is "race separation," which he defined to mean: 
" That the whites and blacks must walk in separate paths 
in the South. As near as may be, these paths should be 
made equal — but separate they must be now and always. 
This means separate schools, separate churches, separate 
accommodation everywhere — but equal accommodation 
where the same money is charged, or where the State pro- 
vides for the citizen." That is, in every city Negroes are to 
occupy separate quarters, go to separate schools, ride in 

356 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

separate sections of the street cars, use separate sidewalks, 
buy in separate stores, have separate churches, places of 
amusement, social organizations, banks, and insurance com- 
panies. This system, which in many directions has al- 
ready been carried out, rests upon a conviction of the 
Negro's ability to maintain an economic and intellectual 
life of his own, without danger to the white race. It has 
the great disadvantage of cutting off the third of the pop- 
ulation which most needs uplift from the influences which 
bear for progress. It still further diminishes that associ- 
ation of the superior with the inferior race, that kindly 
interest of employer in employee, that infiltration of cul- 
ture and moral principles which is the mightiest influence 
among the white people. 

Furthermore, where is the black man to acquire the 
skill to carry on his own enterprises, to build cotton gins 
and oil mills, to stock stores, to found banks, if he is to 
be separated from the white man ? Where is he to buy his 
goods? Here the whole system breaks down; the drum- 
mer is no respecter of persons, and not only is willing to 
sell to a solvent Negro, but is likely to insist that the 
negro merchant shall not give all his orders to a colored 
wholesaler. Then what is to be done with the hundreds 
of thousands of landowners, tenants, croppers, and wage 
hands, who depend on advances from the Whites? There 
is no such thing as commercial segregation; as in other 
directions, when any remedy is proposed which means the 
cutting off of negro labor, or of the profits derived from 
negro custom, the South invariably draws back. 

On the other hand, race separation would give greater 
opportunities to the Negroes and reduce the contact with 
the lower class of the Wnites, out of which comes most of 
the race violence in the South. It is substantially the 

357 



THE SOUTHEEN" SOUTH 

method applied in Northern cities, though nowhere to any 
such degree as in the South. It is a method which, with 
all its hardship to Negroes of the higher class, comes near- 
est being a modus vivendi between the races. 

As for white communities without Negroes, there are 
many such in the mountain regions, and an unsuccessful 
effort was made in the town of Fitzgerald, Ga., by 
Northern immigrants to keep the Negroes out of it, but in 
such places who will do the odd jobs and perform the 
necessary rough labor? How shall houses be built, drays 
be driven and dirt shoveled, if there are no Negroes? 

Try which way you may, there seems no method con- 
sonant with the interests of the South and the principles 
of humanity by which Negroes can be set apart from 
the white people. It was not the choice of their ancestors 
to change their horizon ; nor were the Africans now in the 
United States consulted as to their neighbors; but they 
w'ere born on American soil; they have shared in the toil 
of conquering the continent; they have their homes, their 
interests, and their traditions ; they have never known any 
life except in dependence on and close relations with the 
Whites. However happier the South and the whole coun- 
try might be were there no race question, there seems no 
possibility of avoiding it by taking away all race contact. 

A method of supposed relief widely applied, frequently 
invoked, and strenuously defended, is to terrorize the 
Negro. And the North is not free from that spirit. As 
Mr. Dooley philosophizes : " He'll ayther have to go to th' 
north an' be a subjick race, or stay in th' south an' be an 
objick lesson. 'Tis a har-rd time he'll have, anyhow. . . . 
I'm not so much throubled about th' naygur whin he lives 
among his opprissors as I am whin he falls into th' hands 
iv his liberators. Whin he's in th' South he can make up 

358 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

his mind to be lynched soon or late an' give his attintion 
to his other pleasures iv composin' rag- time music on a 
banjo, an' wurrukin' f r th' man that used to own him 
an' now on'y owes him his wages. But 'tis the divvle's 
own hardship ... to' be pursooed by a mob iv abolition- 
ists till he's dhriven to seek police protection." Still the 
Northern police do give protection against assaults on the 
Negro which Southern police sometimes refuse. Lawless- 
ness is the plague of the South. Attention has already 
been called to the negro crime against person and life, 
the shocking frequency of white crime, the weakness and 
timidity of the courts, and the resort to lynching as an 
alleged protest against lawlessness. The number of homi- 
cides and mob murders is not so serious as the continual 
appeals to violence by editors and public men who are 
accepted as leaders by a large minority and sometimes a 
majority of the white people. Thus John Temple Graves 
calls for " a firm, stern, and resolute attitude of organiza- 
tion and readiness on the part of the dominant race. . . . 
Is this black man from savage Africa to keep on perpetu- 
ally disturbing the sections of our common country? Is 
this running sore to be nursed and treated and anodyned 
and salved and held forever to our breasts ? " Southern 
newspapers abound in fierce and exciting headlines : " The 
Burly Black Brute Foiled!" "A Ham Colored Nigger 
in the Hen House ! " " The Only Place for You is Be- 
hind a Mule," and so on — what somebody has called " The 
wholesale assassination of negro character." Senator Till- 
man in a public lecture has said : " On one occasion we 
killed seven niggers ; I don't know how many I killed per- 
sonally, but I shot to kill and I know I got my share." 
And in another speech, in November, 1907, in Chicago, 
the same man, who has repeatedly been elected to the 

359 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

Senate from a once proud state, said : " No matter what 
the people in the North may say or do, the white race in 
the South will never be dominated by the Negro, and I 
want to tell you now that if some state should ever make 
an attempt to ' save South Carolina,' we will show them 
in their fanaticism that we will make it red before we 
make it black." 

Observe that this ferocity is not directed against the 
Negro simply because he does ill, but equally if he does 
well. Thus a correspondent in Georgia writes : " Let me 
tell you one thing, — every time you people of the North 
countenance in any way, shape or form any form of social 
equality, you lay up trouble, not for yourselves, or 
for us so much, but for the negro. Right or wrong the 
Southern people will never tolerate it, and ivill go through 
the horrors of another reconstruction, before they will per- 
mit it to he. Before we will submit to it, we will Mil 
every negro in the Southern states. This is not idle boast- 
ing or fire-eating threats, but the cold, hard facts stated in 
all calmness." Could hate, jealousy, and meanness reach a 
higher pitch than in the following declaration of Thomas 
Dixon, Jr., sent broadcast through the country in the 
Saturday Evening Post two years ago ? " Does any sane 
man believe that when the Negro ceases to work under 
the direction of the Southern white man, this ' arrogant,' 
' rapacious,' and ' intolerant ' race will allow the Negro to 
master his industrial system, take the bread from his 
mouth, crowd him to the wall and place a mortgage on 
his house? Competition is war — the most fierce and bru- 
tal of all its forms. Could fatuity reach a sublimer height 
than the idea that the white man will stand idly by and 
see this performance? What will he do when put to the 
test? He will do exactly what his white neighbor in the 

360 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

North does when the Negro threatens his bread — kill 
him ! " Could blind race hostility go farther than in the 
Atlanta Eiots of 1907, for which not one murderer has 
ever been subjected to any punishment? 

These violent utterances come almost wholly from the 
Superior Race. The Negroes have their grievances; but 
any intemperate publication toward the white race would 
almost certainly lead to a lynching. An instance has ac- 
tually occurred where a Negro was driven out of a com- 
munity, and glad to escape with his life, because he had 
in his newspaper said with regard to a woman of his own 
race whose character had been assailed, that she was as 
virtuous as any white woman. Doubtless some of the 
cruel and incendiary language that has been quoted is in- 
tended for home consumption ; it is supposed to be a strik- 
ing way of saying to the Negroes that they ought to behave 
better; and alongside every one of these vindictive utter- 
ances could be placed a message of hope and encourage- 
ment from Southern white men to the blacks. These ex- 
pressions of white ferocity in condemnation of negro fero- 
city are overbalanced by such strong words as those of 
Senator Williams : " It cannot be escaped by the exter- 
mination of either race by the other. That thought is 
absolutely horrible to a good man, a believer in the divine 
philosophy of Jesus Christ, who taught mutual helpfulness, 
and not mutual hatred to mankind." Nevertheless, it re- 
mains true that a large number of Southern people who are 
in places of influence and authority advise that the race 
problem be settled by terrorizing the Negro. 

The commonest form of terror is lynching, a deliber- 
ate attempt to keep the race down by occasionally killing 
Negroes, sometimes because they are dreadful criminals, 
frequently because they are bad, or loose-tongued, or in- 

361 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

fluential, or are acquiring property, or otherwise irritate 
the Whites. A saucy speech by a Xegro to a white man may 
be followed by swift, relentless, and tormenting death. In 
every case of passionate conflict between two races the 
higher loses most, because it has most to lose; and lynch 
law as a remedy for the lawlessness of the blacks has the 
disadvantage of occasionally exposing innocent white men 
to the uncontrollable passion of other white men, of filling 
the mind with scenes of horror and cruelty, of lowering the 
standard of the whole white race. 

This subject is inextricably connected with the crimes 
by Negroes, for which lynching is held to be an appropri- 
ate punishment. The statistics collected by Mr. Cutler, 
and stated in a previous chapter, show in the twenty-two 
years from 1882 to 1903 a record of 1,997 lynchings in 
the South; of the Negroes lynched, 707 were charged with 
violence to women and 783 with murder. These figures 
absolutely disprove the habitual statements in the South 
that lynching is common to all sections of the Union ; that 
it is almost always caused by rape; and that rape is a 
crime confined to Negroes. The details of some of these 
cases would show that the mob not infrequently gets an 
innocent person; that it is liable to be carried away into 
the most horrible excesses of burning and torture; that a 
lynching is really a kind of orgy in which not only the 
criminal class among the Whites, but people who are or- 
dinarily swayed by reason simply let go of themselves and 
indulge the primeval brutishness of human nature. Said 
Confucius : " The Master said, ' I hate the manner in 
which purple takes away the luster of vermilion. I hate 
the way in which the songs of Ch'ing confound the music 
of Gna. I hate those who with their sharp mouths over- 
throw kingdoms and families.' " 

363 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

Professor Smith, of Tulane University, is spokesman 
for thousands of respectable and educated men when he 
says : " Atrocious as such forms of rudimentary justice 
undoubtedly are, and severely reprehensible, to be con- 
demned always and without any reserve, it cannot be de- 
nied that they have a certain rough and horrible virtue. 
Great is the insult they wreak on the majesty of the law 
and brutalizing must be their effect upon human nature, 
yet they do strike a salutary terror into hearts which the 
slow and uncertain steps of the courts could hardly daunt. 
In witness stands the fact that lynch-lightning seldom 
strikes twice in the same district or community. Such 
frightful incidents tend to repeat themselves at wide inter- 
vals, both of time and place." 

They tend to repeat themselves immediately; it is not 
an accident that Mississippi, in a large part of which the 
Negroes are renowned for their freedom from the crime 
so much reprehended, nevertheless, has more lynchings than 
any other state ; it is because Mississippi has the lynching 
habit. Strange that in a community like the South, so 
intelligent, so proud of the superiority and the supremacy 
of the white race, the deeds of fifty abandoned black men 
each year should throw millions of Whites into a frenzy of 
excitement ; and that for the crime of those fifty, ten mil- 
lion innocent people are held responsible. Lynching is no 
remedy for race troubles, and never has been; it intensi- 
fies the race feeling a hundredfold ; it is a standing indict- 
ment of the white people who possess all the machinery 
of government, yet cannot prevent the fury of their own 
race. " Surely," says President Roosevelt, " no patriot 
can fail to see the fearful brutalization and debasement 
which the indulgence of such a spirit and such practices 
inevitably portend. . . . The nation, like the individual, 
24 363 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

cannot commit a crime with impunity. If we are guilty 
of lawlessness and brutal violence, whether our guilt con- 
sists in active participation therein or in mere connivance 
and encouragement, we shall assuredly suffer later on be- 
cause of what we have done. The corner stone of this 
republic, as of all free governments, is respect for and 
obedience to the law." That the South can get on with- 
out lynchings is shown by the gradual diminution in the 
number of instances. In 1901 there were 135, in 1906 
only 45, and in this good result the protests of the good 
people in the South have been aided by the criticism of 
the North. Murders of Whites by Negroes are probably 
just as frequent, but they are more likely to go to the 
courts. 

Some things can still be done to reduce the crime of 
the individual without increasing the crime of the mob. 
John Temple Graves has suggested for the Negro that: 
" Upon conviction of his crime he would cross a ^ Bridge 
of Sighs ^ and disappear into a prison of darkness and mys- 
tery, from which he would never emerge, and in which 
he would meet a fate kno^vn to no man save the Govern- 
ment and the excutioners of the law — that the very dark- 
ness and mystery of this punishment would strike more 
terror to the soul of superstitious criminals than all the 
vengeance of modern legal retribution." 

A kindred suggestion is that a special court of Whites 
shall be set up to deal with certain aggravated crimes, out- 
side of the technicalities of the ordinary criminal law. If 
the Negroes would deliver up those of their own number 
whom they suppose to have committed such crimes, they 
would relieve themselves of the odium of protecting the 
worst criminals. The Whites are right in insisting on a 
stronger feeling of race responsibility, but where is theii 

364 



THE WRONG WAY OUT 

own sense of race responsibility when the Salisbury 
lynchers, the Atlanta murderers and the scoundrel Turner, 
who practically kidnapped and then tortured to death a 
Negro woman, are protected by public sentiment ? Extraor- 
dinary remedies are not necessary if the white people will 
make their own courts and sheriffs do their duty, by speedy 
trials, followed by swift and orderly punishment ; and most 
of all by disgracing and driving out of society men who 
take upon themselves the hangman's office without the 
hangman's plea of maintaining the majesty of law. 

Lynching is part of the same spirit as that which in- 
spires peonage, the meanest of all crimes in the calendar; 
for to steal a poor Negro's labor is to rob a cripple of his 
crutches ; to knock down the child for his penny ; it is the 
fleecing of the most defenseless by the most powerful. 
One of the remedies for the ills of the South is that the 
white people shall sternly set themselves against the crime 
of peonage, which exists in every state of the Lower South, 
either with or without the color of law; and which secures 
the most expensive labor that the South can possibly em- 
ploy, since it alarms and discourages a thousand for every 
man whose forced labor is thus stolen. 

The terrible thing about all the suggestions of violence 
and hatred as a remedy is that they react upon the white 
race, which has most to lose in property and in character. 
" There are certain things," said Governor Yardaman, of 
Mississippi, in a public proclamation, " that must be done 
for the control of the negro which need not be done for 
the government of the white man. In spite of the pro- 
visions of the federal constitution the men who are called 
upon to deal with this great problem must do that which 
is necessary to be done, even though it may have the ap- 
pearance at times of going somewhat without the law. . . . 

365 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

If the people of the respective communities of this state 
will only come together and resolve to convert every negro 
into a laborer and self-supporter, even though it be neces- 
sary to make him a laborer upon the county^s or the state's 
property, they will serve their communities and their state 
well." No idea is more futile than that you can drive 
people with whips into the Kingdom of Heaven ; that you 
can teach an inferior race to observe laws by yourself 
breaking them ; that you can put one half the community 
outside the law, while claiming American liberty for the 
other half. Though the negro race has little to urge in 
public, it feels the degradation and the hurt. Violence 
solves no problems ; it does not even postpone the evil day. 
The race problem must be solved by applying to Negroes 
the same kind of law and justice that the experience of 
the Anglo-Saxon has found necessary for its own protec- 
tion. 



4 



41 



CHAPTEE XXVI 

MATERIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES 

THE methods of dealing with tlie race question dis- 
cussed in tlie last chapter all go back to the idea 
that the Negro can be improved only by some proc- 
ess distasteful to him. Race separation he dislikes, expa- 
triation he shudders at, and violence brings on him more 
evils than it removes, to say nothing of the effect on the 
Whites. The world has tried many experiments of civiliz- 
ing people by the police, and they are all failures, from the 
Russian Empire to the West Side of New York, especially 
since both the Cossacks and the metropolitan police have 
faults of their own. In the South and in Russia alike there 
is doubtless a feeling that the people at the bottom of the 
scale are things below the common standard, that force is 
necessary because they will not listen to reason. 

None of the forcible remedies meets the most obvious 
difficulty in the South — that the present condition of the 
lower race is not a foundation for great wealth and high 
prosperity. If the Negro has reached his pitch, if he is to 
remain at his present average of morals and industry and 
productivity, the South may well be in despair, for it is 
far below that of the low Southern White, and farther be- 
low that of the Northwestern farmer. The condition of 
the black is a menace to society — if it must stay at the 
present level. 

367 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

In the chapter on " Is the Negro Kising ? " some rea- 
sons are given for believing that the status of the race has 
much improved in the last forty years and is still gaining. 
Upon this critical point numbers of both races testify. 
Kelly Miller says of the achievements of his people: 
" Within forty years of only partial opportunity, while 
playing as it were in the backyard of civilization, the 
American negro has cut do^vn his illiteracy by over fifty 
per cent ; has produced a professional class some fifty thou- 
sand strong, including ministers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, 
editors, authors, architects, engineers and all higher lines 
of listed pursuits in which white men are engaged; some 
three thousand negroes have taken collegiate degrees, over 
three hundred being from the best institutions in the North 
and West established for the most favored white youth; 
. . . negro inventors have taken out some four hundred 
patents as a contribution to the mechanical genius of 
America; there are scores of negroes who, for conceded 
ability and achievements, take respectable rank in the 
company of distinguished Americans." 

This opinion is not confined to members of the negro 
race; even so cordial an enemy of the Negro as John 
Temple Graves admits that " The leaders of no race in 
history have ever shown greater wisdom, good temper and 
conservative discretion than distinguishes the two or three 
men who stand at the head of the negro race in America 
to-day " ; and elsewhere he declares that there are two good 
Negroes for every bad Negro, a proportion which does not 
obtain in every race. Thomas Nelson Page is of opinion 
that, " Unquestionably, a certain proportion of the Negro 
race has risen notably since the era of emancipation,'' and 
John Sharp Williams commits himself to the statement that 
" Fully ninety per cent of the negro race is behaving itself 

368 



MATEKIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES 

as well as could be expected ; it is at work in the fields, on 
the railroads, and in the sawmills, and does not, for the 
most part, know that there is a fifteenth amendment/^ A 
cloud of witnesses confirm the belief that a fourth to a 
fifth of all the Negroes in the South are somewhat im- 
proving and slowly saving. • Some of them have heark- 
ened to the advice of an English writer : " Try to realize 
two things : first, that you are living in a commercial re- 
public; a country whose standard, in all things, is mate- 
rial; second, that you are the greatest economic power in 
this country." 

The possibility of a general industrial uplift depends 
upon several factors which are not easy to fix. It is a 
question whether the lower four fifths of the negro race 
has anything like the potentiality of the upper fraction, 
for it is made up mostly of plantation Negroes, who have 
certainly advanced a long way from slavery times, are 
better clothed, better fed, better housed, better treated, 
but are still a long way below most of the Whites in their 
own section. The most appalling thing about the negro 
problem is, this mass of people on the land who are doing 
well in the sense that they work, make cotton, yield 
profits, help to make the community prosperous, but who 
are ignorant, stupid, and have no horizon outside the cot- 
ton field and the cornfield. In spirit they still hark back 
to Whittier's plantation song, 

De yam will grow, de cotton blow. 

We'll hab de rice an' corn; 
O nebber you fear if nebber you hear 

De driver blow his horn. 

Is there anything stirring in the minds of that great, 
good-natured, inert and unthinking mass which will bring 

369 



THE SOUTHEEN SOUTH 

them up where the reproach now heaped upon them shall 
fade away? Still more, if they try to arise, will the 
Whites permit them ? That is no idle question, for rising 
means that some of them will seek other pursuits, and 
the white people have already given notice that certain 
avenues of labor are closed to them. Contrary to many 
assertions confidently made, the Negroes are not as a race 
crowded out of the skilled trades in the South; but the 
trades union is bound to appear and the effort will be to 
shut negro mechanics out of the unions altogether, as has 
been done in some Northern places. The Negro as he rises 
to higher possibilities may find those possibilities with- 
drawn. Listen to the philosophy of Thomas Dixon, Jr., a 
Christian minister : " If the Negro is made master of the 
industries of the South he will become the master of the 
South. Sooner than allow him to take the bread from 
their mouths, the white men will kill him here, as they 
do North, when the struggle for bread becomes as 
tragic. . . . Make the Negro a scientific and successful 
farmer, and let him plant his feet deep in your soil, and 
it will mean a race war. . . . The Ethiopian cannot 
change his skin, or the leopard his spots. Those who 
think it possible will always tell you that the place to work 
this miracle is in the South. Exactly. If a man really 
believes in equality, let him prove it by giving his daughter 
to a Negro in marriage. That is the test." This is noth- 
ing more nor less than the negro preacher's exhortation to 
his congregation : " My dear hearers, dar is two roads a-ly- 
in' straight before you, and a-branchin' off de one from de 
odder at the nex' corners; one of 'em leads to perdition, 
and de odder to everlastin' damnation. Oh, my friends, 
which will you choose ? " If the Negro will not rise, 
argues Dixon, he gives nothing to the community, away 

370 



MATERIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES 

with him ! If he does rise, he may take work that other- 
wise some white man might do, lynch him ! 

The real argument of competition works just the other 
way. The inferior Negro is not likely to take the bread 
out of the mouth of the superior white man; but, when 
relieved from the abnormal conditions of slavery and of 
Reconstruction, he may still be able to hold his own in 
the struggle for existence. Emancipation threw upon the 
Negro the responsibility for his own keeping. The most 
that he can ask is a fair field without artificial hindrances 
or limitations; and in such a field a race on the average 
inferior may nevertheless find tasks in which it excels, 
and may maintain its race life unimpaired. Kelly Miller 
says : " You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, 
I was bom with an iron hoe in my hand " ; and the world 
needs the hoe hand just as much as the silversmith. 

It would appear that for the uplift of the Negro some- 
thing is needed on the white side: remembrance of the 
foundations of American liberty, of the workings of Chris- 
tianity, of the economic truth that you are not made poor 
because your neighbor gets on in the world. The curse of 
the South is that its people do not more genuinely realize 
that the more active, industrious, and thrifty a people be- 
come, the more their neighbors receive out of the enlarged 
contribution to the community. If the Negroes were all 
as intelligent as Roscoe Conkling Bruce, as forehanded as 
Benson of Kowaliga, as lyric as Paul Dunbar, the Whites 
in the South might get rich out of the trade of the Negro, 
and some of them see it so. For instance, President Win- 
ston, of the Agricultural College of North Carolina: 
" Greater industrial efficiency would prove an everlasting 
bond between the races in the South. It is the real key 
to the problem. Let the Negro make himself indispensable 

371 



THE SOUTHEEX SOUTH 

as a workman, and he may rely upon the friendship and 
affection of the whites. . . . Public sentiment in the South 
still welcomes the Negro to every field of labor that he is 
capable of performing. The whole field of industry is 
open to him. The Southern whites are not troubled by 
his efficiency but by his inefficiency." Meantime the really 
industrious Negroes, of whom there are a couple of mil- 
lion or more, follow the advice of Paul Dunbar : 

I've a humble little motto 

That is homely, though it's true, — 

Keep a-pluggin' away. 

It's a thing when I've an object 
That I always try to do, — 

Keep a-pluggin' away. 

When you've rising storms to quell. 

When opposing waters swell. 

It will never fail to tell, — 
Keep a-pluggin' away. 

The self-interest of the planter in the efficiency of his 
labor does not necessarily lead him to see the highest 
interests either of the negro race or of the South, under 
the present industrial system, which makes a plantation a 
workshop rather than a farm. The ownership of rich cot- 
ton lands only means wealth if you can find negro laborers 
and keep them at work. One of the most powerful up- 
lifting agencies in all agricultural countries is the desire to 
own land, and one of the most frequent texts of Booker 
Washington is that now is the time for the Negro to ac- 
quire land, for it will never again be so cheap; but where 
is the land to be found ? Although ownership has almost 
completely changed since the Civil War, good lands are ag- 
gregating more and more into large tracts. The white far- 

372 



MATEKIAL AND POLITICAL EEMEDIES 

mer finds it difficult to hold his own against the capitalist 
and the syndicate, and even the thrifty black is beset by 
special difficulties. 

In the first place, the rural Negro has, unless by his 
saving from sawmill and turpentine work, little oppor- 
tunity to make money with which to buy a farm, except 
from the farm itself : hence he buys on time, pays a heavy 
interest charge, and is at every disadvantage. In the sec- 
ond place, few planters are willing to break up their land 
into small tracts ; to do so takes away their livelihood, their 
only opportunity of making available their knowledge of 
cotton planting and of dealing with cotton hands. Some 
of them are absolutely opposed to letting the Negroes have 
land. Mr. Bell, of Alabama, one of the largest land- 
owners in the South, is credited with saying that he " has 
no use for a Nigger that pays out." That is to say, he 
prefer his hands to be unprogressive and in debt. Per- 
haps the South fails to realize that the wealth of the Wes-t- 
ern. Middle, and New England states comes from encour- 
aging people to do the best they know how. The more in- 
dustrious the people are, the more business there is of every 
kind and for everybody. The South would be happier and 
more prosperous if it could accept the Western system of 
moderate-sized detached farms, on each of which there is 
an intelligent owner or tenant. 

The large number of negro landowners (though many 
of them perhaps are mortgaged) and the evident prosper- 
ity of those communities in which the greatest number of 
them hold their land, seems to show that landowning is 
a motive that ought to be strongly set before them. The 
old notion of Eeconstruction times that the federal gov- 
ernment ought to furnish " forty acres and a mule '' was 
not so far wrong; it would have been perfectly possible 

373 



THE southee:n' south 

for the nation to acquire land in large tracts, to subdivide 
it, and give or sell it at nominal rates, so as to offer every 
thrifty Negro the chance of proprietorship; but that op- 
portunity, if it ever existed, has long gone by, and the 
Negro must depend upon himself if he wishes to buy land. 

The present system is not only industrial; it tends to 
make a peasant out of the Negro, and peasant is a term of 
reproach in the United States, though in France, Germany, 
and Italy there are rich peasants as well as poor ones, 
peasants who employ labor as well as those who have noth- 
ing but their hands. The American objection to a peasant 
system is its fixity ; the peasant is an hereditary laborer on 
the land, usually the land of another ; he leaves it to other 
people to carry on the state, to elevate the community. 
Nevertheless, it is simply the truth that under the present 
system of tenancy employment and day wages, nearly half 
of the negro race in the South is in effect a peasantry. 
Perhaps that is their fate. Perhaps the Alabama lawyer's 
doctrine, so comfortable for the white man, is to prevail : 
" It's a question who will do the dirty work. In this coun- 
try the white man won't: the Negro must. There's got 
to be a mudsill somewhere. If you educate the Negroes 
they won't stay where they belong; and you must consider 
them as a race, because if you let a few rise it makes the 
others discontented." 

The question of who is to do the crude, disagreeable 
and dirty work, has solved itself in the North which has 
had one stratum after another of immigrants who were 
willing to take it, each shoving his predecessor higher up 
in the scale of employment; but no foreigners will come 
into the South in order to relieve the Negro of hewing of 
wood and drawing of water. It looks as though the ma- 
jority of the race would be compelled to accept some con- 

374 



MATEKIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES 

dition on the land, without a share in the government and 
without much prospect of getting into other kinds of life. 
The prospect is discouraging in itself, and it readily shades 
into restraint, subjection, and peonage — the worst of rem- 
edies for a race low in origin, which has Just emerged from 
a debasing servitude, and which needs all the stimulus of 
ambition and opportunity. 

The South has proved its capacity for organizing and 
directing ignorant labor, but a peasant system has more 
dangers for the upper than the lower class. The gentle- 
men of eighteenth-century France, with all their high 
breeding, did not understand the people under them and 
were hated of their peasants; the Pashas of Egypt were 
degraded by their mastery over thousands of fellahin; the 
Eussian boyars have so alienated the peasants that they 
have almost rent the empire in twain. To accept a peas- 
ant system would be a confession that the South must re- 
main in the lower stage of economic progress which goes 
with such a system. The duty and the privilege of the 
South is still to seek the way of enlightment; to make the 
Negro a better laborer instead of crystallizing him into a 
race of dependents. 

Material progress is necessary for the Negro and equally 
for the Poor White, not simply that he may be better clad 
and have better health, but because it brings with it other 
influences which go to elevate mankind. You cannot make 
good citizens and virtuous people out of a dirty, ill-fed 
family in a one-room house ; the remedy of intellectual and 
moral uplift is as important as the material side. Thrift 
works both ways: the man who buys good clothes for his 
children wants to send them to Sunday school; the poor 
children in Sunday school beg their fathers to give them 
good clothes. Such intellectual and moral agencies are 

375 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

at work, though here again some white leaders object to 
them. For instance, John Temple Graves asks : " Will the 
negro, with his increasing education and his surely and 
steadily advancing worth and merit, be content to accept, 
in peace and humility, anything less than his full and 
equal share in the government of which he is a part ? " 
Here is one of the stumbling blocks in the way of the 
progress of the race. 

For thrift and saving habits the South has always 
lacked one of the approved aids ; it has few savings banks, 
few ordinary banks which attract the deposits of Negroes, 
and few steady investments in small denominations. For 
this reason the proposed Postal Savings Banks would be 
a boon to the South, and would help toward the purchase 
of land and other property. The Negroes' own fraternal 
orders and stock companies furnish some opportunities for 
savings. Regulation of drinking and gambling places 
will also make saving likelier among the laborers. That 
difficulties and conflicts of interest would rise between 
Whites and Negroes was foreseen at the time of Recon- 
struction, and it was honestly supposed by the thinking 
people of the North that the ballot would at the same time 
protect the black against white aggression, and would edu- 
cate him into the sense of such responsibility that there 
would not be negro aggression. Giving the negro suf- 
frage, however, while at the same time through the Re- 
construction state constitutions disfranchising his former 
master, brought about a condition of unstable equilibrium, 
and the strongest, best organized, and most determined 
race of course prevailed. For some years after the restora- 
tion of white supremacy in the Southern states, colored 
men were still allowed to vote in districts like the Sea Is- 
lands of South Carolina, and the Delta of Mississippi, 

376 



MATERIAL AND POLITICAL REMEDIES 

where tliey were predominant, but since 1885 there has 
not been any genuine negro suffrage in any state of the 
South, in the sense that Negroes were assured that their 
votes could be cast and would be counted even if they 
made a difference in the result. The last remnant of a 
successful combination of negro voters with a minority of 
the Whites was in the North Carolina election of 1896. 

By the series of constitutional amendments begun in 
1890, and since spread through the South, a property or 
intelligence qualification has practically been established for 
Negroes while not applying to poor or illiterate Whites. In 
the Northern states race difficulties, so fat as they take form 
in politics, are settled by the usual course of elections; 
in the South it is the unalterable intention of the W^hites 
that the Negroes shall not participate in choosing officials 
or in making laws either for white men or for themselves. 

i'urthermore, the South is bitterly opposed to the hold- 
ing of offices by Negroes except the small local appoint- 
ments. Though Negroes are one third in number in the 
South, and more than one half the population in two 
states, they have not a single state administrative official, 
member of legislature, or judge. The opposition to negro 
office holding extends to federal appointments, although a 
considerable number of places, some of them important, 
are still held by Negroes. They obtain appointments as 
railway mail clerks and letter carriers by competitive ex- 
amination, and a few of them are selected for collector- 
ships of internal revenue and of customs, on the basis 
that the Negroes are part of the community and entitled to 
some recognition. To exclude them altogether from the 
public service, as they have been almost excluded from the 
suffrage, may somewhat diminish race friction, but it is 
a mark of inferiority which the whole negro race resents. 

377 



CHAPTER XXYII 

MORAL REMEDIES 

THE regeneration of a race, as of mankind, is some- 
thing that must proceed from within and work out- 
ward. Hence the most obvious remedy for race 
troubles is that both races should come up to a higher plane 
of living. What has been the progress of the Negro in that 
direction ; what is the likelihood of further advance ? The 
chance of the blacks is less than it would be if the white 
race had a larger part in it. The Negro is insensibly af- 
fected by the spirit of the community in which he lives. 
He knows that though ruffians threaten him with revolvers 
or with malignant looks that have a longer range, there 
are also broad-minded and large-hearted white men who 
bid him rise ; but he is almost cut off from the machinery 
of civilization set in motion by his white neighbor; he 
cannot use or draw books from the public library ; he prac- 
tically cannot attend any churches, lectures, or concerts, 
except those provided directly for him. On the plantation 
he hardly sees a white face, except those of the managers 
and their families. He has little opportunity to talk with 
white men ; none for that interchange of thought which is 
so much promoted by sitting round the same table. He 
can attend no colleges or schools with white students. In 
the common schools and in many institutions above, he 
meets only negro teachers. He is far more cut off from 

378 



MORAL REMEDIES 

the personal touch and influence of white men and women 
of high quality than he was in slavery times. 

Within his own race he experiences the influences of 
some notable minds, and, with few exceptions, the men 
recognized by the Negroes as their chief leaders counsel 
moderation and preach uplift. Many of the lesser leaders 
are deficient in character, and a large fraction of the min- 
isters of the gospel do not, by their lives or conversation, 
enforce the lessons which they teach from the pulpit; they 
also have not the advantage of training by white teachers. 
In the process of separation of races, the negro mind has 
gone far toward losing touch with the white mind. The 
best friends of the race are grieved and humiliated from 
time to time to find that they had expected something 
which the Negroes did not recognize as due from them — 
service, loyalty, gratitude. Thousands of people believe 
that the Negro makes it the object of his life to cheat a 
white man. Thousands of Negroes feel that they are not 
bound by promises or contracts made to their own hurt. 

Since the white race is not in such friendly relations 
with the Negro as to impress upon him the causes of white 
superiority, some Southern writers would like to see a 
sort of benevolent state socialism applied to the Negro, 
such as laws under which the coming and going of the 
blacks should be regulated, their implements secured, and 
labor distributed where it was needed. Like many other 
suggestions, this remedy would cure the Negro's shiftless- 
ness by taking away his self-control, and would apply to 
the lazy black man a regime which would be abhorrent if 
employed upon the lazy white man. 

Where the Whites appreciate and aid the Negroes, the 
color line cuts them off from making the distinctions 
which are the rewards of the energetic and successful in 
25 379 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

other communities. The negro poet, the essayist, and the 
educator have no fellowship with those neighbors who 
could appreciate their genius. So far as the South can 
prevent it, the most energetic and successful negro busi- 
ness man can hope for no public office. The machinery for 
uplifting the Negro through white influence is no longer 
in operation. The inferior race is thrown back upon 
members of the inferior race for its moral stimulus; and 
then is reproached because it does not form higher ideals 
and advance more rapidly. The successful Negro exercis- 
ing a good influence among his fellows cannot be admitted 
to the white man's club, cannot be made the intimate of 
men of kindred aims. As Senator Williams says : " When 
we find a good negro we must encourage him to stay good 
and to grow better. We are doing too little of that. The 
old adage, ' Give a dog a bad name and you have made 
a bad dog,' is a good one. Indiscriminate cursing of the 
whole negro race, good and bad alike included, is an ex- 
emplification of the adage. I have frequently thought how 
hard it was for a good negro, especially during campaign 
times, to stay good or to grow better when he could not 
come within sound of a white speaker's voice without hear- 
ing his w^hole race indiscriminately reviled without mention 
of him as an exception, even in the neighborhood where 
he was kno^\Tl to be one." 

One of the strongest civilizing forces both North and 
Soutli has been the Church, through which has been spread 
abroad not only the incitements to life on a high plane, 
but the intellectual stimulus of the preacher's voice, of 
the association of keen men, of Bible study. The Negro 
has the outward sign of this influence, the force of which 
is recognized by all candid people; but his clergy are not, 
as a class, moral leaders, and here, as in so many other 

380 



MORAL REMEDIES 

directions, he is deprived of the leadership of the Whites. 
For similar populations in the North there is an apparatus 
of missions, and the schools and colleges planted by North- 
erners in the South are almost all substantially missionary 
movements ; but the South dislikes them and makes almost 
no effort to rival them. The Christian church, which is 
the bearer of civilization to Africa, China, the American 
Indians, leaves the Negroes in great part to christianize 
themselves if they can. 

The white man has another opportunity of helping up- 
ward his dark neighbor through his control of legislatures 
and courts. Garner would solve the problem — "not by 
denying him the advantages of education, but by curbing 
his criminal instincts through a more rigid enforcement 
of the law. The laws against carrying concealed weapons, 
against gambling, and against vagrancy should, if neces- 
sary, be increased in severity and enforced with a vigilance 
and certainty which will root out gambling, force the idle 
vagrant to work, and send the pistol carrier to prison. 
The abolition of the saloon and the extirpation of the 
^ blind tiger ' and the cocaine dive would remove the 
most potent external causes of negro criminality. . . . 
Conditions could be materially improved by the establish- 
ment of a more adequate police surveillance and control 
and the introduction of a more effective police protection, 
for it is a well-known fact that in most Southern com- 
munities this protection is notoriously insufficient. It is 
also well worth considering whether some reasonable and 
effective measures might not be taken to prevent the move- 
ment of the negroes to the towns and cities and their 
segregation in particular localities." Says an Alabamian 
lawyer : " A different and milder set of laws ought to be 
enacted for him than for the white man. . . . His best 

381 



THE SOUTHER^^ SOUTH 

friends in the South are among our ^gentlemen/ The low 
White has no use for him. He hates the Negro and the 
Negro hates him." From the federal government, as has 
been showTi above, no effective legislation can be expected ; 
but may not something be done by special state action? 
Many observers are alive to the possibility of removing 
temptations which are thought to be specially alluring to 
the Negro. The ill-disposed country black is a rover, a 
night-hawk, and has his own kinds of good times, including 
a supply of whisky ; the bad town Negro finds his pleasures 
right at hand, and is frequently abetted in them by the 
white man. To be sure, low drinking houses, gambling 
houses and worse places, flourish among all races in New 
York, and are no more likely to be exterminated in New 
Orleans than in the Northern city for such considerations. 
John Sharp Williams would resort to " some sort of 
common-sense remedies of the negro question upon the 
criminal side, principally in the nature of preventives. In 
the first place, they suggest the rigid enforcement of va- 
grant laws by new laws whenever, in justice and right, they 
need strengthening. In the second place, they suggest a 
closing of all low dives and brothels where the vagrant, 
tramp, and idle negroes consort and where their imagina- 
tions — they being peculiarly a race of imagination and 
emotion — are inflamed by whisky, cocaine, and lewd pic- 
tures. It must be remembered that that which would not 
inflame the imagination of a white man will have that 
effect upon the tropical, emotional nature of the darky. 
. . . We ought, like Canada and Cape Colony, to have 
mounted rural police or constabulary, whose duty it would 
be to patrol the country districts day and night." The 
cry in the Southern newspapers against negro dives gener- 
ally ignores the fact that many of them are carried on by 

382 



MOEAL EEMEDIES 

white people, and others are partially supported by white 
custom. At the bottom of humanity race distinctions dis- 
appear, and you could find, if you searched for it, in many 
Southern towns, beneath the lowest negro deep a lower 
white deep. The difficulty with Southern legislation is 
that it is more hostile to negro dives than to white dives. 

A more promising legislative remedy is an efficient va- 
grant law, by which the hopelessly idle, the sponges on the 
industry of their race, should receive the dread punishment 
of work. Northern states which are unable to find statutes 
and magistrates strict enough to put an end to the in- 
tolerable white tramp nuisance, have little cause to criticise 
the Southern loafers, of whom the Whites are found in 
quite as large a proportion as the N'egroes. Several states 
already have vagrant laws, but they are applied chiefly to 
Kegroes, often very inequitably, and play into the iniqui- 
tous system by which sheriffs make money in proportion 
to the number of prisoners that they arrest and keep in 
jail. The Birmingham Age Herald says that to abolish 
imj3risonment for nonpayment of criminal costs is '^ as 
much out of our reach as is a flight to Mars. . . . We 
must build jails to suit the operations of the collectors of 
fees. There is no help for it." 

Suggestions that there be a kind of negro court for the 
less serious negro crimes, have been made by Thomas Nel- 
son Page and others; and Negroes could probably admin- 
ister as good local justice as some of their dominant race. 
In the island of St. Helena, for instance, where seven 
thousand people for a long time had no local court, a 
white magistrate was sent over who sat day after day 
drunk on the bench, finally shot a man (the second homi- 
cide on that island in forty years), and was put on his trial, 
but still held his judicial office. Perhaps a special negro 

383 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

court for petty crimes would increase the sense of respon- 
sibility; but it collides with the present system of selling 
petty criminals to the planters. 

Something could be done by an efficient system of 
rural police such as is needed all over the country, North 
and South. In Georgia and South Carolina bills have 
lately been pending for a state mounted police which 
would be a sort of revival of the volunteer patrols of slav- 
ery times. The suggestion is fought hard, however, on the 
ground that white men might be obliged to give an ac- 
count of themselves as well as Negroes. 

The only thoroughgoing legislative measure which 
seems likely to help the Negro is prohibition, which is now 
sweeping through the Lower South. It is a region which 
suffers from hard drinking, and there has long been a 
strong sentiment against the traffic; but the tumultuous 
success of prohibition laws in communities like Alabama 
and Mississippi is due in great part to the conviction of 
employers of labor in cotton mills, in ironworks, in the 
timber industry, and on the land, that they are losing 
money because their laborers are made irregular by drunk- 
enness. That objection applies as much to the selling of 
liquor to Whites as to Negroes; but the drinking white 
men have an influence over prosecuting officers that the 
Negroes cannot command; and it looks as though the re- 
sult would be a kind of prohibition which shuts off the 
stream from the dusky man's throat while leaving it run- 
ning for the white man. If the South succeeds in keeping 
liquor away from the Negro in the Southern cities, it will 
show more determination than exists in any Northern 
center of population. 

In general, legislation is not a remedy for the race 
question, because breaches of the law come from both sides ; 

384 



MORAL REMEDIES 

and nobody is skillful enough to draft a bill which will, if 
righteously applied, apply only to criminal and dissolute 
Negroes. The cutting down of drinking shops, the arrest 
of the drones, a rural police, enforcement of the liquor 
laws, will help in the South because it will bring about a 
feeling of responsibility in both races — but race hostility 
is not caused by laws, is not curable by laws, and relies 
upon defying laws. 

Perhaps the most striking failure of the Whites to ex- 
ercise an influence over the Negroes is through the negro 
schools. They are, to be sure, carried on under laws made 
by white men, administered by state and county white 
officials, but there the relation ends. Even from the point 
of view of an unsympathetic superior race, the schools are 
badly supervised; and when it comes to the teachers, the 
lower race is thrown back upon teachers of the lower race. 
In the North the raw children from the alien families are 
Americanized by their fellows in the public schools, un- 
der the influence of teachers taken from the class of the 
population which has most opportunity for training. 
Not so in the South, where the blind are expected to 
lead the blind, where negro teachers trained by Negroes 
are expected to inculcate the principles of white civili- 
zation. 

The refusal of the South to permit white people, and 
especially white women, to teach the Negroes, is a plant 
of recent growth. In slavery times the white mistresses 
and their daughters habitually taught the household 
servants their duties and set before them a standard of 
morals. Beyond that, they were often proud of teaching 
capable slaves to read and write. On every theory of the 
relation of the races this transmittal of civilization was 
not only allowable, but a sacred duty. Nowadays the mis- 

385 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

tresses have the smallest control over or influence upon 
their domestic servants; and, with few exceptions, the 
South absolutely refuses to improve the low estate of the 
Negroes by permitting the white young j^eople to teach 
them. 

The arguments against putting white teachers into 
negro schools are altogether weak. The first is that it 
is unsafe for white women, but the Northern women who 
have been for years among Negroes as teachers have no 
fear nor cause for fear; and the influence of a pure and 
refined white woman would tend to diminish some of the 
worst crimes of the black race. It is urged, however, that 
even men could not teach Negroes, first, because the 
Negroes would not trust their girls to them ; secondly, be- 
cause it would cut off the field or negro employment; 
thirdly, because a white man does not wish to teach 
Negroes ; and, finally, because none but inferior men would 
seek such employment. 

Surely the poor little black children are not likely un- 
der any circumstances to suppose that they are the equals 
of the members of the proud families that held their 
fathers in slavery ! The white people sorely need the em- 
ployment; the Negroes still more need the example and 
admonition of trained and high-minded people. The re- 
lation is not unknown. In the public schools of Charles- 
ton, for forty years, the negro children have been taught 
by white ladies, and as well taught as the white children. 
In Alabama, and even in Virginia, public schools were for 
a time taught by Whites, and you hear of sporadic cases 
elsewhere, as in a district of Louisiana, where the mother 
of the chairman of the school board was a teacher, and she 
was so incapable that no white school would have her on 
any terms, so they compromised by giving her a negro 

386 



MORAL REMEDIES 

school. With these small exceptions, a relation between 
the races, through which none of the dreaded evils of race 
equality could come about, was rejected; and that is the 
main reason why the negro schools have been poor and 
continue inferior. The Southern woman is not below the 
Northern in a sense of duty; the Southern schoolmarm 
is the equal of her Yankee sister in refinement and in 
pluck; and the Southern woman was the only class of 
people in the South who could at the same time have 
taught the pickaninnies to read, and the older people to 
recognize that the Whites were their best friends. 

Of all the remedies suggested, education is the most 
direct and the most practical because it has so far been 
neglected; education is needed for the safety of the race. 
As Leroy Percy, the successful planter, puts it : " You 
cannot send these men out to fight the battle of life help- 
lessly ignorant. In slavery, he was the slave of one, and 
around him was thrown the protecting care of the master. 
In freedom you cannot, through the helplessness of igno- 
rance, make him the slave of every white man with no 
master's protection to shield him '' ; and he adds, " The 
education of the N'egro, to the extent indicated, is neces- 
sary for the preservation of the character and moral in- 
tegrity of the white men of the South." Professor Gar- 
ner roundly declares that " Governor Vardaman^s conten- 
tion that education increases the criminality of the negro 
is nothing but bold assertion and has never been supported 
by adequate proof." 

Education is just as much needed to break windows 
into dark minds, to open up whatever of the spiritual the 
Negro can take to himself. It is the one remedy in which 
the North can take direct part, and never was there more 
need of maintaining the schools in the South, supported 

387 



THE SOUTHEKN SOUTH 

chiefly by Northern contributions; for they have the op- 
portunity to teach those lessons of cleanliness of body and 
mind, of respect for authority, of thrift, personal honesty, 
of human relations, which the public schools are less fitted 
to inculcate. Many of these schools have white teachers, 
all have white friends; they interfere in no way with the 
education furnished by the South; they teach no lessons 
harmful to the Negro or the white man; they perform a 
function which the Whites in the South offer to their own 
race by endowed schools and colleges, and which they do 
not attempt to provide for the Xegroes. Education is 
not a cure-all, education is only the bottom step of a long 
flight of stairs ; but neither race nor individual can mount 
without that step. 

Throughout this book it has been steadily kept in mind 
that there are two races in the South between which the 
Southern pr'oblem is divided; and that there can be no 
progress without both races taking part. Here is the most 
difficult part of the whole matter : the two races, so closely 
associated, are nevertheless drifting away from each other. 
Time was when men like Wade Hampton, of South Caro- 
lina, and Senator Lamar, of Mississippi, expected that 
Whites and Negroes would cooperate in political parties; 
time was when former slaveholders joined with former 
slaves in a confident attempt to bring the Negroes up 
higher. Those voices of encouragement still are heard, 
but there is in them a note of weariness. Almost every- 
body in the South would be pleased if the Negroes (of 
course without prejudice to the white domination) would 
rise or rise faster. It would mean also much to the 
white race if the cook always came in the morning, and 
the outside man never got drunk, and the cotton hand 
would raise a bale to the acre, and the school child would 

388 



MOKAL REMEDIES 

learn to read about how to keep his place toward the white 
man. 

Every thinking man in the South knows that he is 
worse off because the Negro is not better off. That is the 
reason of the rising dissatisfaction, wrath and resentment 
in the minds of many Whites. They feel that the Negro 
has no sense of responsibility to the community; they ac- 
cuse him of sullenness, of a lack of interest in his em- 
ployment and his employer. Just what the Negro thinks 
in return is hard to guess. "Brer Rabbit, 'e ain't sayin' 
nuffin " ; but it is plain that the races are less friendly to 
each other, understand each other less, are less regardful 
of each other's interests, than at any time since freedom 
was fairly completed. We have the unhappy condition that 
while both races are doing tolerably well, and likely to do 
better, race relations are not improving. 

In other parts of the country where there are such 
rivalries, efforts are made to come to an understanding. 
Each side has some knowledge of the arguments of the 
other; they appeal to the same press; the leaders sooner 
or later are brought together in legislatures or in a social 
way, and gradually come to understand each other's diffi- 
culties. Some efforts have been made in the South to 
study this question in association. The Negroes have now 
several organizations which bring people together for dis- 
cussion. The Agricultural and Industrial Fairs which 
they are beginning to carry on are one such influence. 
The negro schools of the Calhoun and Talladega type do 
something; the large annual conferences organized by 
Atlanta, Tuskegee, and Hampton, with their subsequent 
publications, are a kind of clearing house of opinions on 
the conditions of the Negro and of sound advice. A few 
years ago the attempt was made in the so-called Niagara 

389 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

Movement to organize the Negroes in defense of their 
political rights. 

On the side of the Whites there has been the Ogden 
Movement, for the improvement of the Southern white 
education, part of the outcome of which has been the for- 
mation of the General Education Board and Southern 
Education Board. The South Atlantic Quarterly, pub- 
lished at Trinit}^ College, North Carolina, encourages a 
free exchange of views on Southern conditions; and 
though the Manufacturers' Record lays the responsibility 
for the Atlanta riots upon the Southern white people who 
have been urging moderation in the South, the Southern 
educational movement goes on steadily, and seems to be 
gaining ground. 

An effort was made after the riots to bring about a 
Southern commission of three white men from each stat'.^, 
to discuss plans for keeping up the race integrity of the 
Whites, including the Negro to stay on the soil, educating 
both races, and reforming the courts, but it was allowed 
to fail. Some Southern newspapers bitterly attacked it 
on the ground that no discussion was necessary ; that every- 
body knew all the facts that were cogent, and that any 
such discussion of the negro problem would be likely to 
bring down criticism from " doctrinaires, theorists and 
self-constituted proprietors of the universe in the North." 
To the Northern mind this seems one of the most alarm- 
ing things about the whole matter. The labor question 
in the Northeast, the Jand question in the Northwest, 
are openly discussed man to man, and newspaper to news- 
paper. Nobody thinks that the conditions in the South 
are agreeable; everybody would like to see some better- 
ment; and the refusal to discuss it simply makes the 
crisis worse. 

390 



MORAL REMEDIES 

This opposition is still stronger against any form of 
joint discussion between representatives of the white and 
negro races. The real objection seems to be that it would 
be a recognition that the Negro had a right to some share 
in adjusting his own future, and that what he thinks about 
the question ought to have weight with the white people. 
This is another of the cruel things about the whole situa- 
tion. The whole South is acquainted with the negro crim- 
inal and the shiftless dweller on the borders of the cities; 
almost no white people are acquainted by personal obser- 
vation with the houses, with the work, and still less with 
the character and aims of the best element of the Negroes. 
For this reason, Northern investigators have a certain ad- 
vantage in that they may freely read the statements of 
both sides, supplement them out of personal experience 
and conversation, and try to strike a balance. There are 
plenty of reasonable people in both races, each of whom 
knows his own side better than anybody else can possibly 
know it ; hence mutual discussion, common understanding, 
some kind of programme toward which public sentiment 
might be directed, would seem an obvious remedy, and is 
upheld by such men as Thomas Nelson Page; yet it is a 
remedy w^hich is never tried. 

All the suggestions that have been discussed above 
may be roughly classified into remedies of push and reme- 
dies of pull, and this classification corresponds to the 
points of view of the two dominant classes of Southern 
Whites. In studying the books, the articles and the fugi- 
tive utterances on this subject, in talking with men who 
see the thing at first hand, in noting the complaints of 
the Negroes and the Whites alike, it is plain that there is 
in the South a strong negro-hating element, larger than 
people like to admit, which appeals to drastic statutes, to 

391 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

unequal judicial punishments, to violence outside of the 
law ; in a word, to " keeping the nigger down/' Along- 
side it the thinking class of Southern people (which ap- 
pears to be gaining ground) seeks the elevation of both 
races, and especially of that one which needs it most. 
Meanwhile the Negro sits moodily by, waiting for the su- 
perior race to decide whether he shall be sent to the cala- 
boose or to school. 

The Southern problem is thus brought down in its last 
analysis to the simple question whether the two races can 
permanently live apart and yet together. That depends, 
in the first place, on the capacity of the Negro to improve 
far enough to take away the reproach now heaped upon 
him; and in the second place in the willingness of the 
Whites to accept the deficiencies of the negro character as 
a part of the natural conditions of the land, like the 
sterility of parts of the Southern soil, and to leave him 
the opportunity to make the most of himself. 

The three fundamental duties of the white man, ac- 
cording to Judge Hammond, of Atlanta, are to see " that 
his own best interest lies in the cultivation of friendly re- 
lations with the negro. ... To treat the negro with abso- 
lute fairness and justice . . . advising him and counseling 
him about the important affairs of his everyday life." 
These duties lie upon the white man because, as Thomas 
Nelson Page states it : " Unless the whites lift the Negroes 
up, the Negroes will drag them down." 

Nobody, white or black. North or South, is able to point 
out any single positive means by which the two races are 
both to have their full development and yet to live in 
peace. Every positive and quick-acting remedy when ex- 
amined is found invalid. Violence of language or of be- 
havior of botli sides does nothing whatever to remove the 

392 



MORAL REMEDIES 

real difficulties. The agencies of uplift are slow and un- 
certain and nobody can positively predict that they will do 
the work. The South, with all its magnificent resources, 
is far behind the other sections of the Union, both in wealth 
and productive power. It can only take its proper place 
in the Union by raising the average character and en- 
ergy of its people — of all its people — for it cannot be 
done by improving either race while the other remains 
stationary. 

In a word, the remedy is patience. Dark as things look 
in the South, it is subject to mighty forces. In many 
ways the strongest influence for peace and concord in the 
South is simply self-interest. The most intelligent and 
thoughtful men in the South see clearly that unless the 
people can be made to improve, the section will always 
lag behind. Side by side with this force is the spirit 
of humanity, of practical Christianity, which forbids 
that milions of people shall be cut off from the agen- 
cies of evangelization. The South is behind no other 
part of the country in a sense of the greatness of moral 
forces. 

From every point of view, the obvious thing for the 
South is to make the best of its condition and not the 
worst, to give opportunities of uplift to all those who can 
appropriate them, to raise the negro race to as high a 
point as it is capable of occupying. This is a long, hard 
process, full of disappointment and perhaps of bitterness. 
The problem is not soluble in the sense that anyone can 
foresee a wholly peaceful and contented community divided 
into two camps; but the races can live alongside, and co- 
operate, though one be superior to the other. That superi- 
ority only throws the greater responsibility on the upper 
race. Nobody has ever given better advice to the South 

393 



THE SOUTHERN SOUTH 

than Senator John Sharp Williams — " In the face of this 
great problem it would be well that wise men think more, 
that good men pray more, and that all men talk less and 
curse less." In that spirit the problem will be solved, be- 
cause it will be manfully confronted. 



MAP AND TABLES 



I 



COMPARATIVE POPULATION (1900) 

White Elements Contrasted 

{In Thousands) 



Northern Groups (1900). 



Equivalent Southern Groups (1900). 



1 Colorado. . . 

2 Indiana. . . .■ 

3 Indian Ter. 

4 Iowa 

5 Kansas. . . . 

6 Michigan.. . 

7 Minnesota., 

8 Nebraska. . 



Total 

9 North Dakota. . 

10 Oklahoma 

11 South Dakota. . 

12 Utah 

13 Wisconsin 

14 California 

15 Idaho 

16 Montana 

17 Oregon 

18 Vermont 

Double Total 



529 
2,459 

303 
2,219 
1,416 
2,399 
1,737 
1,059 



I 
12,121 196 



312 
308 
381 
272 
2,058 
1,403 
154 
226 
395 
343 

18,033 



540 
2,516 

392 
2,232 
1,470 
2,421 
1,751 
1.006 



12,388 



234 



319 
398 
402 
277 
2,069 
1,485 
162 
243 
414 
344 



18,501 



1 Alabama 

2 Arkansas 

3 Florida 

4 Georgia 

5 Louisiana 

6 Mississippi ..... 

7 North Carolina. . 

8 South Carolina. . 

9 Tennessee 

10 Virginia 

Total 10 States. . . 

11 Texas 

Total 11 Seced 
ing States.. . 

12 Delaware 

13 Dist. of Columbia 

14 Kentucky 

15 Maryland 

16 Missouri 



Total South. . 



1,001 

945 

297 

1,181 

730 

641 

1,264 

558 

1,540 

1,193 

9,350 

2,427 



827 
367 
231 
1,035 
651 
908 
624 
782 
480 
661 



11.777 



154 
192 

1,862 

952 

2,945 



17,882 



6,566 
621 



1,829 
1,312 
529 
2,216 
1,382 
1,551 
1,894 
1,340 
2,021 
1.854 



15,928 
3.049 



7,187 18,977 



31 

87 
285 
235 
161 



7,986 



185 

279 

2,147 

1,188 

3,107 



25,883 



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403 



COMPARATIVE MANUFACTURES (1905) 

Southern Groups 

{Money Values in Thousands of Dollars) 





No. of 
Estab- 
lish- 
ments. 


Wage 
Earners. 


Capital. 


Annual 
Wages. 

21,878 
14,544 
15,767 
27,392 
25,316 
14,819 
21,375 
13,869 
22,806 
27,943 


Cost of 
Material. 


Value of 
Products. 


1 Alabama 


1,882 
1,907 
1,413 
3,219 
2,091 
1,520 
3,272 
1,399 
3,175 
3,187 


62,173 
33,089 
42,091 
92,749 
55,859 
38,690 
85,339 
59,441 
60,572 
80,285 


105,383 

46,306 

32,972 

135,212 

150,811 

50,256 

141,001 

113,422 

102,439 

147,989 


60,458 
21,799 
16,532 
83,625 
117,035 
25,801 
79,268 
49,969 
79,352 
83,649 


109,170 

53,864 

50,298 

151,040 

186,380 

57,451 

142,521 

79,376 

137,960 

148,856 


2 Arkansas 

3 Florida 


4 Georgia 


6 Mississippi 

7 North Carolina. . . 

8 South Carolina... . 

9 Tennessee 

10 Virginia 


TotallO States.. 
11 Texas 


23,065 
3,158 


610,288 
49,066 


1,025,791 
115,665 


205,709 
24,469 


617,488 
91,604 


1,116,916 

150,528 


Total, 11 Seced- 
ing States 


26,223 


659,354 


1,141,456 


230,178 


709,092 


1,267,444 


12 Delaware 

13 Dist. of Columbia. 

14 Kentucky 

15 Maryland 

16 Missouri 


631 

482 

3,734 

3,852 

6,464 


18,475 

6,299 

59,794 

94,174 

133,167 


50,926 

20.200 

147,282 

201,878 

379,369 


8,158 

3,658 

24,439 

36,144 

66,644 


24,884 
7,732 

86,545 
150,024 
252,258 


41,160 

18,359 

159,754 

243,376 

439,549 






Total Border 
States 


15,163 


311,909 


799,655 


139,043 


521,443 


902,198 


Whole South 


41,386 


971,263 


1,941,111 


369,221 


1,230,535 


2,169,642 



404 



1 



COMPARATIVE MANUFACTURES (1905) 

Equivalent Northern Groups 

(Money Valuss in Thousands of Dollars) 





No. of 
Estab- 
lish- 
ments. 


Wage 
Earners. 


Annual 
Wages. 


Capital. 


Cost of 
Material. 


Value of 
Products. 


1 Colorado 

2 Indiana 


1,606 

7,044 

466 

4,785 

2,475 

7,446 

4,756 

1,819 

507 

657 

686 

606 

8,558 


21,813 
154,174 


107,664 
312.071 


15,100 

72,056 

1,114 

22,997 

18,883 

81,279 

35,843 

11,022 

1,031 

1,655 

1,422 

5,157 

71,472 


63,114 

220,507 

4,849 

102,844 

156,510 

230,081 

210,554 

124,052 

7,096 

11,545 

8,697 

24,940 

227,255 


100,144 
393,954 
7,909 
160,572 
198,245 
429,120 


3 Indian Terr 


2,257 5,016 

49,451 111,427 

35,570 88,680 

175,229 337,894 

69,636 184,903 

20,260 80,235 

1,755 5,704 

3,199 11,108 

2,492 7,585 

8,052 26,004 

151,391 412,647 


5 Kansas 

6 Michigan 


7 Minnesota 

8 Nebraska 

9 North Dakota 

10 Oklahoma 

11 South Dakota 

12 Utah 


307,858 
154,918 
10,218 
16,550 
13,085 
38,926 
411,140 


13 Wisconsin 


Total 


41,411 


695,279 1,690,938 


339,023 


1,392,044 


2,242,639 


14 California 

15 Idaho . . 


6,839 
364 
382 
1,602 
1,699 
2,751 


100,355 

3,061 

8,957 

18,523 

33,106 


282,647 

9,689 

52,590 

44,024 

62,659 


64,657 
2,059 
8,652 
11,444 
15,221 
30,087 


215,726 
4,069 
40,930 
30,597 
32,430 
66,166 


367,218 
8 769 


16 Montana 

17 Oregon 

18 ^ ermont . . 


66,415 
55,525 
63,084 

128,822 


19 Washington 


45,199 


96,953 


Total . . . 


13,637 


209,201 


548,562 


132,120 


389,918 


689,833 




Double Total. . . 


55,048 


904,480 


2,239,500 


471,143 


1,781,962 


2,932,472 




169 
14,921 

115 

199 
1,618 

169 
2,109 


4,793 

379,436 

802 

3,478 

65,366 

1,834 

43,758 


14,396 

975,845 

2,892 

4,638 

109,495 

2,696 

86,821 


3,969 

208,405 

693 

2,153 

27,693 

1,261 

21,153 


14,595 

840,057 

1,628 

2,236 

73,216 
1,301 

54,419 


28,083 

1,410,342 

3,096 

5,706 

123,611 

3,523 

99,041 


21 Illinois 

22 Nevada 


23 New Mexico 

24 New Hampshire. . 

25 Wyoming 

26 West Virginia 


Total .... 


19,300 


499,467 


1,196,783 


265,327 


987,452, 1,673,402 




Grand Total. . . . 


74,348 


1,403,947 


3,436,283 


736,470 


2,769,414 4,605,874 

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COMPARATIVE COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION (1907) 
Southern Groups 





Teachers. 


Pupils 

Average 

Attendance 

[thousands]. 


Finances. 




Value of 

School 

Property 

[thousands]. 


Annual 

Revenue 

[thousands]. 


Annual 
Expendi- 
ture 
[thousands]. 


1 Alabama 


7,757 
8,113 
3,362 

10,379 
5,615 
9,499 

10,146 
6,228 
9,829 
9,468 


249 
221 
91 
317 
160 
285 
297 
222 
353 
220 


4,569 
4,039 
2,001 
5,822 
4,098 
2,190 
4,250 
2,200 
6,332 
5,718 


2,287 
2,428 
1,384 
2,831 
2,952 
1.511 
2,519 
1,531 
3,314 
3,323 


2,620 


^ Arlfansas .... 


2,414 


3 Florida 


1,352 




2,850 


5 Louisiana 

6 Mississippi 

7 North Carolina. . . . 

8 South Carolina. . . . 

9 Tennes.see 

10 Virginia 


2,169 
2,641 
2,378 
1,416 
2,705 
3,357 






Total 10 States.. 
11 Texas 


80,396 
17,867 


2,415 
499 


41,219 
15,178 


24,080 
7,443 


23,902 
7,402 






Total, 11 Seced- 
ing States 


98,263 


2,914 


1 56,397 


31,523 


31,304 


12 Delaware 

13 Dist. of Columbia. . 

14 Kentucky 

1.*^ \fnrvland 


897 

1,575 

9,245 

5,290 

17,847 


25 

43 

310 

135 

493 


1,627 
7,005 
6,368 
4,790 
27,847 


499 

2,164 

4,263 

3,424 

10,853 


540 
2,012 
4,051 
3,307 




8,482 






Total South 


133,117 


3,920 


104,034 


52,726 


49,696 



410 



COMPARATIVE COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION (1907) 

Equivalent Northern Groups 









Finances. 






Pupils 










Teachers, 


Average 
Attendance 
[thousands]. 


Value of 

School 

Property 

[thousands]. 


Annual 

Revenue 

[thousands]. 


Annual 
Expendi- 
ture 
[thousands]. 




4,944 

16,841 

2,740 


106 

420 

61 


10,207 

31,499 

2,175 


5,836 

13,816 

790 


4,476 




12,012 


3 Indian Terr 


920 


4 Iowa .... 


28,508 
12,743 


366 

277 


24,950 
11,000 


11,619 
6,294 


10,681 


5 Kansas 


6,874 


6 Michigan 


17,286 


423 


30,944 


15,260 


12,086 


7 Minnesota 


13,928 


322 


26,000 


11,085 


10,803 


8 Nebraska 


10,059 


186 


12,755 


5,809 


5,561 


9 North Dakota 


6,109 


72 


4,900 


3,000 


2,900 


10 Oklahoma 


4,386 


103 


3,624 


2,053 


1,629 


11 South Dakota 


5,358 


65 


5,138 


2,702 


2,730 


12 Utah 


2,010 


61 


3,577 


1,996 


2,056 


13 Wisconsin 


14,491 
139,403 


328 


23,243 


10,223 


8,946 


Total 


2,790 


190,012 


90,483 


81,674 


14 California 


9,714 


248 


36,680 


10,914 


12,219 


15 Idaho 


1,897 
1,741 


48 
35 


3,162 
3,489 


1,240 
1,597 


1,370 


16 Montana 


1,716 


17 Oregon 


4,228 


77 


5,732 


2,671 


2,474 




3,984 
6,209 


49 
131 


3,416 
12,448 


1,255 
5,397 


1,271 


19 Washington 


5,504 


Double Total.. . 


167,176 


3,378 


254,939 


113,557 


106,228 




626 

28,083 


15 

770 


1,158 
69,142 


610 

30,958 


620 


21 Illinois 


30,106 


22 Nevada 


322 
923 


7 
25 


523 
1,000 


345 
524 


490 


23 New Mexico 


484 


24 New Hampshire.. . 


2,916 


50 


5,240 


1,379 


1,453 


25 Wyoming 


787 


14 


914 


609 


436 


26 West Virginia 


8,061 


165 


7,113 


3,490 


3,361 


Grand Total 


208,894 


4,424 


340,029 


151,472 


143,178 



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1 



INDEX 



4 



INDEX 



Abbott, E. H., articles by, on 
Southern question, IS. 

Advance system on cotton plan- 
tations, 268; lien loans, 26S; 
impositions, 269-270, 272; 
specimen accounts, 271; 
Christmas money, 272. 

Africa, negroes in, 94-97. See 
also Colonization. 

Afro- American as name for Ne- 
gro, 92. 

Agriculture. Southern crops, 24, 
220; poor white farmers and 
tenants, 41, 45; foreign labor- 
ers, 57; white small farmers, 
60; negro life, 115-116; Ne- 
groes as laborers, 127; farms 
owned by Negroes, 144-145; 
amount of negro products, 
145; actual wealth of Southern 
states, 220-221; population 
221; reclamation of swamps, 
221; comparative wealth of 
seceding states, 237-238; of 
whole South, 241; compara- 
tive value of cotton and other 
Southern crops, 251. See also 
Cotton. 



Alabama. Mining, 24; Republi- 
can party, 173; negro voters, 
176; leasing of convicts, 201; 
contract law and peonage, 
283; ilhteracy, 293; per-capita 
school tax, 295; comparative 
statistics, 395-415. 

Albany, Ga., negro school near, 
312. 

Alderman, E. A., and negro 
progress, 179. 

Alexander's Magazine, 18. 

Alexandria, La., Italians at, 
56. 

Amalgamation of races. Evil of, 
157; determination against, 
344, 349. See also Miscegena- 
tion, Mulattoes. 

American Colonization Society 
and Liberia, 96, 97. See also 
Colonization. 

American Magazine, articles in, 
on race question, 18. 

Americus, Ga., as trade center, 
26. 

Amusements, negro, 116. 

Andersonville, Ga., statue to 
Wirz in, SS. 

Andrew, J. A., protest of, against 
class prejudice, 165. 



421 



IXDEX 



Appalachian Forest Reserve, 

proposed, 223. 
Architecture, Southern standard 

of, 26, 304. 
Arizona, comparative statistics 

of, 395-415. 
Arkansas. Illiteracy, 293; com- 
parative statistics, 395-415. 
Armstrong, S. C, and Hampton 

Institute, 334. See also 

Hampton. 
Art galleries in South, 304. 
Assessment. See Taxation. 
Association of Colleges, 300. 
Atlanta. Size, 28; progress, 29, 

242; foreign population, 51; 

negro population, 107; race 

riot, 206, 390. 
Atlanta, University of. Confer- 
ences, 131, 389; founding, 309. 

See also Colleges. 
Atlanta Evening News and race 

riot, 206. 
Atlanta Georgian, on lynching, 

213. 
Augusta, Ga., water power of, 

26. 
Austin. Capitol, 27; progress, 29. 
A vary, Myrta L., on educational 

value of slavery, 84. 



B 



Baker, R. S., articles by, on race 
question, 18. 

Baldwin Co., Ala., Northerners 
in, 48. 

Bale, cotton. Making, 259; 
round, 259; careless construc- 
tion. 274. 



Baltimore. Foreign population, 
51; as port, 229, 233; schools, 
296, 315. 

Banishment of Negroes, 195, 
205, 206. 

Banking, Southern, 225; com- 
parative statistics of, 236, 238, 
402-403; and cotton culture, 
263; need of savings banks, 
376. 

Baptist Church, negro, 117. 

" Basket-name, " 138. 

Bassett, J. S., and race problem, 
72, 345. 

Beaufort County, S. C, negro 
suffrage in, 176. See also Sea 
Islands. 

" Before Day Clubs, " 190. 

Bell, of Alabama. Plantation, 
254; and negro upHft, 373. 

Benevolent institutions, com- 
parative statistics of. North 
and South, 237, 406-407. 

Benson settlement, 141, 371. 

Berea College and negro educa- 
tion, 317. 

Bernhard of Saxe- Weimar, Duke, 
on cotton seed, 260. 

Bibliography of Southern prob- 
lem, 7-19; bibliographies, 7; 
anti-negro works, 8-12; con- 
servative Southern books, 12- 
14; works by Negroes, 14-17; 
monographic studies, 17; mag- 
azine articles, 18; necessity of 
first-hand investigation, 19. 

Birmingham, Ala. Iron trade, 
25; progress, 29, 242. 

Birmingham Age Herald on pun- 
ishment of vagrancy, 383. 



422 



INDEX 



Black-and-tan Republicans, 173. 

Black Belt. Extent, 21; manu- 
factures, 25 ; trade centers, 26 ; 
richness of soil, 220. 

Blount College and coeduca- 
tion, 290. 

Blowing Rock, N. C, view from, 
31. 

" Bohunks, " 54. 

"Boomer" described, 34. 

Boyd, J. E., and peonage, 285. 

Brawley, W. H., and peonage, 
285. 

Brookhaven, Miss., violence in, 
199, 211, 212, 214. 

Brown, W. G., "Lower South," 
14. 

Brownsville incident, 129, 194. 

Bruce, P. A., on Virginians of 
seventeenth century, 82. 

Bruce, R. C, as leader, 371. 

Brunswick, Ga., as port, 22, 229. 

Business. Leadership in South, 
62; Negroes in, 130. 



Cairo, 111., mob in, 207. 

Calhoun, J. C, Northern educa- 
tion of, 290. 

Calhoun, Ala, Negro commun- 
ity, 141; school, 318, 389. 

California. School expenditures, 
295 ; comparative statistics, 
397-417. 

Cann, Judge, on concealment of 
negro criminals, 193. 

Capital, in South, 225; compara- 
tive statistics of banking, 402- 
403 ; of manuf acturing,404-405. 



Carnegie Educational Fund and 
Southern colleges, 300. 

Catholic Church and Negroes, 
117. 

Cavaliers, myth of Southern de- 
scent from, 81. 

Census Bureau, data from, 235. 
See also Population. 

Ceylon, advance system in, 272. 

Chain gangs in South, 200. 

Chamberlain, D. H., on lynch- 
ing, 213. 

Charleston. As port, 22, 229; 
character, 28; negro morahty, 
108; Crum incident, 171. 

Charleston News and Courier, 
character of, 70. 

Chattanooga, lynching at, 212. 

Chesnutt, C. W., as writer, 15, 
325. 

Child labor in South, 264. 

Chinese and South, 54. 

" Christmas money, " 272. 

Churchill, W. S., on Negroes in 
Africa, 95, 

Cities. Chief Southern, 22; 
growth of smaller Southern, 26 ; 
effect on Whites and Negroes, 
27 ; urban population of South, 
28; progress of Southern, 28; 
negro life, 114, 167; schools, 
291, 296, 314, 315. 

Civil War. Poor Whites and, 
40; present Southern attitude 
toward secession, 84; towards 
Northern leaders, 85 ; belief 
in impoverishment through 
emancipation, 86 ; Anderson- 
ville and statue of Wirz, 88; 
negro soldiers, 129. 



423 



IXDEX 



Clay Eaters, name for Poor 
Whites, 38. 

Clearings, bank, comparative 
statistics of. North and South, 
402-403. 

Climate of South, 24, 25. 

Coal in South, 224, 225. 

Cole, peonage case, 282. 

Colleges, Southern. Antebel- 
lum, 290; present develop- 
ment, 292, 302; comparative 
statistics, 296, 300, 414-415; 
for women, 301, 302; ranking 
institutions, 302; state uni- 
versity funds, 302; and pol- 
itics, 302; Northern instruc- 
tors, 303; endowments, 307; 
postbellum negro, 309; char- 
acter of negro, 315, 317; need 
of negro, 317, 336; number of 
negro graduates, 318; objec- 
tions to negro, 331-332; aca- 
demic versus industrial train- 
ing for Negroes, 332-336. 

Collier's Weekly on Southern 
progress, 247. 

Colonization of Negroes. At- 
tempts, 96-97; not a solution 
of race problem, 350-352. 

Colorado, comparative statis- 
tics of, 397-417. 

Colored person as name for Ne- 
gro, 92. 

Columbia, S. C. Water power, 
26; progress, 29; manufactur- 
ing output, 276. 

Columbus, Ga., water power in, 
26. 

Commerce. Southern ports, 22, 
228-229; South and Panama 

4 



Canal, 22; Southern inland 
centers, 26; of Liberia, 96; 
Southern inland transporta- 
tion, 226-230; through South- 1 
ern ports, 233; and race sep- 
aration, 357, 

Concealed weapons, carrying of, 
in South, 37, 64, 196, 216. 

Conferences, negro, 131, 389. 

Congress, no interference by, in 
race problem, 347-348. 

Consumption, negro mortality, 
108. 

Convicts. Number, North and 
South, 197; Southern treat- 
ment, 200-202, 286. 

Cooperative Educational Asso- 
ciation of Virginia, 306. 

Corbin, Austin, Sunny Side plan- 
tation, 57, 256, 281. 

Cordova, S. C, and negro educa- 
tion, 327. 

Corn, comparative value of crops 
of, 237, 241, 242, 248, 251. 

Cotton. Extent of belt, 21, 252; 
Southern manufactures, 25, 
274, 276; Poor Whites and 
manufacture, 45, 275; for- 
eign and negro cultivators, 
58; value of crop, 237, 241, 
248; making of, 250-260; 
Southern claim of importance, 
250 ; monopolizes Southern 
interest, 250; compared with 
other Southern crops, 251- 
252; and race problem, 252, 
261,267; history, prices, 252; 
staples, 252; fertihzing, 253; 
application of term planta- 
tion, 253-255; types of plan- 



24: 



INDEX 



tations, 255-256; white la- 
borers, 255, 262, 264, 267; 
labor system, 257, 261; cul- 
tivation, 257-258; yield per 
acre, 258; ginning and baling, 
258, 274; round bale, 259; 
seed as product, 260; hands, 
261-277; independent negro 
raisers, 262; relation of negro 
hands to plantation, 262, 266; 
character of labor, 263; man- 
agement of plantation, 263- 
264; working division of plan- 
tations, 264; renters, croppers, 
and wage hands, 265-266; ex- 
tra work, 266; instability of 
negro laborers, 266; negro mo- 
nopoly of labor, 267, 277; 
necessity of training of labor- 
ers, 267, 273, 274; complaints 
of negro hands, 267; advance 
system and its effect, 268-273 ; 
wastefulness of culture and 
distribution, 273; selection of 
seed, 274; culture and practi- 
cal peonage, 279. 

Cotton seed. Seed trust of Sea 
Island staple, 252; value as 
product, 260; selection, 274. 

"Cotton-weed," 256. 

Courts. Conduct of criminal trials 
in South, 198-199; suggestion 
of negro, 383. See also Crime. 

Crackers, name for Poor Whites, 
38. 

Crime in South. Mountaineer, 
37 ; concealed weapons, 37, 64, 
196, 216; mulattoes and, 112; 
and its penalties, 181-204; in 
North, 183; Northern ideas of 



Southern, 184; proportion of 
homicides, 184, 197; character 
of white homicides, 185; crim- 
inahty of Negroes, 186-189; 
negro education and, 188, 189, 

192, 328, 334, 343, 387; Ne- 
groes and organized, 189; con- 
ditions promoting negro, 190; 
Before Day Clubs, 190; negro 
assault on white women, 191- 

193, 208; concealment of ne- 
gro criminals, 193; criminal 
example of Whites, 194, 207; 
whipping of Negroes, 194, 205; 
banishment of Negroes, 195, 
205, 206; homicide of Ne- 
groes by Whites, 195-196; 
treatment of Negroes by po- 
lice, 196; relative convictions, 
North and South, 197; con- 
duct of murder trials, 198; ne- 
gro trials and protection, 199 
chain gangs, 200; prisons, 201 
leasing of convicts, 201, 286 
prison reform, 202; pardons, 
203 ; white responsibility 
for inefficient criminal justice, 
203; race riots, 205-208; lynch- 
ing, 208-217, 361-365; preva- 
lence, 216; influences working 
against, 216; and race animos- 
ity, 339; preventative meas- 
ures for negro, 381-384; com- 
parative statistics of prisoners, 
North and South, 406-407. 
See also Peonage. 

Croppers on cotton plantations, 
266. 

Crum, W. D., opposition to ap- 
pointment of, 171. 



425 



IXDEX 



Cuba, Negroes in, 98. 

Cullman, Ala., excludes Negroes, 

167. 
Cutler, J. E., on lynching, 191, 

208, 362. 

D 

Dallas, progress, 29. 

Davis, Jeff, as political leader, 
63. 

Davis, Jefferson, on Southland, 
2. 

Dayton plantation, 255. 

Death-rate, negro, 107-110. 

Debts, comparative public, of 
South, 246. 

Delaware, comparative statis- 
tics of, 397-417. 

Democratic party, effect of con- 
trol of, in South, 72, 173, 174. 

Deposits, bank, comparative, 
statistics of. North and South, 
402-403. 

District of Columbia, compara- 
tive statistics of, 397-417. 

Divorce, negro, 135. 

Dixon, Thomas, Jr. As writer 
on race question, 9; on South- 
ern temperament, 68; on Re- 
construction, 86; on misce- 
genation, 155; and suppression 
of negro development, 180, 
345, 370; on Booker Washing- 
ton and Tuskegee, 319, 332; 
on cost of negro education, 
328; on terrorizing Negroes, 
360. 

Domestic servants, negro, 124- 
127. 



Domination, negro, as live ques- 
tion, 160. 

" Dooley, Mr. " on terrorizing 
Negroes, 358. 

Dothan^ Ala., abortive lynching 
in, 211. 

Douglass, Margaret, negro school j 
held by, 309. J 

Drink. Negroes and, 109, 117; 
Southern manufacture of liq- 
uor, 225; Southern prohibi- 
tion, 384. 

Drug habit, negro, 109. 

Du Bois, W. E. B. Bibliogra- 
phies of negro question, 8; 
as writer and investigator of 
negro question, 16-17, 114; 
literary style, 16, 325; on race 
problem, 69; on gospel of 
work, 120; on suffrage and 
leadership, 131; on race pre- 
judice, 161 ; " Litany of At- 
lanta, " 207; on race separa- 
tion and progress, 318; on 
right to education, 325, 333, 
336. 

Dunbar, P. L. And negro ques- 
tion, 16; on unaccountability, 
187; on industry, 372. 

Dunleith plantation, 265. 

Durham, N. C, tobacco manu- 
facture in, 225. 



Edmonds, R. H., on Southern 

potential wealth, 231. 
Education, negro. Illiteracy, 

98, 293, 294, 320; in North, 99; 

negro teachers, 130, 314; and 



426 



mDEX 



crime, 188, 189, 192, 328, 334, 
343, 387; race separation, 168, 
313; of cotton hands, 267, 273; 
problem/ 308; antebellum, 308; 
during and after Civil War, 
309; beginning of public 
schools, 310; present status of 
public schools, 310; white op- 
position, 311, 323-337; typ- 
ical rural schools, 311-313; re- 
fusal of authorities to provide 
schools, 313; interaction of 
poor schools and attendance, 
313, 320; character of urban 
schools, 314; secondary and 
higher, 314; private schools, 
white opposition, 315-317, 
319, 332; colleges, 315, 317- 
318; boycotting of white 
teachers, 316; influence of pri- 
vate schools, 318; Hampton 
and Tuskegee and industrial, 
319; question of federal aid, 
321, 348; private funds, 322; 
as help in race problem, 320, 
385-388; needs, 320-321, 385- 
387; questions of negro cap- 
ability, 323-327; question of 
harmful, 327; cost to South, 
328; as unreasonable burden 
on Whites, 328-331; opposi- 
tion to academic, 331; public 
industrial training, 332; aca- 
demic versus industrial, 332- 
334; contradictory objections, 
333, 337; professional, 335; op- 
position to secondary, 335 ; ne- 
cessity of academic, 336; fun- 
damental race objection, 336; 
negro complaints, 336; com- 



parative statistics, secondary, 
North and South, 412-413. 

Education, white, in South. Of 
Mountaineers, 36, 37; of Poor 
Whites, 44; comparative sta- 
tistics of seceding states, 237, 
248, 294, 408-417; of whole 
South, 241, 248, 295, 408- 
417; on basis of white pop- 
ulation, 295; divergent views 
of need, 288 ; tradition of 
culture, 289; antebellum, 289- 
290; postbellum, 290; de- 
velopment of pubhc schools, 
291; of secondary and higher 
systems, 292; normal, 292; 
comparative illiteracy, 292- 
294; urban schools, 296; rural 
schools, 296-299; rural super- 
intendence, 299 ; secondary, 
299; of women, 299, 301; col- 
leges, 300-303; professional, 
303; influence of travel, 304; 
hopeful conditions, 304, 306; 
museums and art galleries, 
304; libraries, 305; literature, 
305; historical societies, 305; 
taxes, 306; promotive associa- 
tions, 306; Northern aid, 306; 
federal aid, 307; standard. 
339. 

Electric railroads in South, 227. 

Eliot, C. W. On South and 
Union, 5 ; on education in 
■South, 288. 

Emancipation, Southern belief 
in impoverishing effect of, 
86, 219. 

Eyre, J. E., and negro insurrec- 
tion, 98. 



38 



427 



INDEX 



Family life, negro, 116, 324. 

Farming. See Agriculture, Cot- 
ton. 

Fenwick's Island, inhabitants of, 
107. 

Fernandina as port, 229. 

Fertilizing in cotton culture, 
253. 

Fifteenth Amendment. Reason 
for, 175, 376; present South 
and, 345. See also Suffrage. 

Fisheries, Southern, 225. 

Fisk University, founding of, 
309. 

Fitzgerald, Ga. Northern com- 
munity, 49 ; Negroes excluded, 
167, 358. 

Flaxseed, Southern crop, 251. 

Fleming, W. H., on remedy of 
race problem, 342, 345. 

Florida. And immigration, 52; 
leasing of convicts, 201 ; 
comparative statistics, 397- 
417. 

Forests, Southern wealth, 22; 
221-223; lumbering and ad- 
vancement of Mountaineers, 
36; lumbering and Poor 
Whites, 45; efforts for forest 
reserve, 223; naval stores, 
223. 

Fourteenth Amendenmt, en- 
forcement of, and race prob- 
lem, 347. 

Freedmen's Bureau and negro 
education, 309. 

Frontier life of Southern Moun- 
taineers, 23, 33, 37. 



G 



Gadsden, on South and immi- 
gration, 53. 

Gallagher peonage case, 280. 

Galveston. As port, 22, 233; 
rivalry with New Orleans, 228; 
lecture courses, 305. 

Gambling, negro, 189. 

Garner, J. W. On agitation of 
race question, 341; on legisla- 
tive remedy of problem, 381; 
on negro education and crime, 
387. 

General Education Board, and 
Southern education, 300, 306, 
307, 390; and negro schools, 
322. 

Georgia. Loss of natives, 47; 
valuations, 238; rural police, 
384 ; comparative statistics, 
397-417. 

Georgia, University of, standing 
of, 302. 

Ginning of cotton, 259, 274. 

Glenn, G. R., on negro capabil- 
ity, 326. 

Goldsboro, Fla., negro conmiun- 
ity at, 142. 

Gonzales, N. G., murder of, 185. 

Grady, H. W. On race problem, 
69, 151; on Lincoln, 85; on 
faithfulness of slaves in war 
time, 139; on race separation, 
356. 

Graham, Jeffrey, case of de- 
scendants of, 156. 

Graves, J. T. On negro ad- 
vancement, 140, 345, 368, 376; 
on negro segregation^ 355; on 



428 



INDEX 



terrorizing Negroes, 359; on 
legal terror, 364. 

Greenville, Miss., as trade cen- 
ter, 26. 

GriflSn, A. P. C, bibliographies 
of, on negro question, 8. 

H 

Hammond, Judge, on white du- 
ties in race problem, 392. 

Hampton, Wade, on coopera- 
tion with Negroes, 388. 

Hampton Institute. Opposi- 
tion, 317; influence, 319; justi- 
fication, 333; basis of success, 
334; conferences, 389. 

Hardy, J. C, on training of cot- 
ton laborers, 274. 

Harris, J. C, as writer, 305. 

Hay, comparative value of 
Southern crop of, 241, 251. 

Hayti, Negroes in, 98. 

Health. Southern, 25; negro 
death-rate, 107-110; mulatto, 
111. 

Helms, Glenny, peonage case, 
284. 

Hermitage plantation, 254. 

Hill, W. B., and negro develop- 
ment, 179. 

Hill Billies, name for Poor Whites, 
38. 

Historical societies, Southern, 
305. 

History. Southern attitude, 80- 
90; separate, of antebellum 
South, 80; Southern adher- 
ence to traditional views, 81; 
Cavalier myth, 81 ; beUef in an- 



tebellum prosperity, 82; and in 
advantages of slavery to Ne- 
groes, 83; present attitude 
towards Civil War, 84-85, 88; 
towards Reconstruction, 85-88 ; 
towards post-Reconstruction 
times, 89, 218. 

Hoffman, F. L. "Race traits," 
10; on negro death-rate, 107- 
108; on negro physical infer- 
iority, 132 

Home life. See Family life. 

Horseback riding in South, 23. 

Hotels. Race separation in 
South, 170; improvement of 
Southern, 227. 

Houses. Of Mountaineers, 34, 
36; of Poor Whites, 43; negro 
farm, 115, 254-256. 

Houston, progress, 29. 

Howell, Clark. Gubernational 
campaign, 173; on progress of 
South, 247, 248. 



Idaho, comparative statistics of, 
397-417. 

Illinois, comparative statistics 
of, 399-417. 

Illiteracy. Comparative South- 
ern, 237, 292; negro, 293, 320; 
decreasing, 293-294. See also 
Education. 

Immigration, foreign. And 
South, 50-58; foreign popula- 
tion of South, 50; and ante- 
bellum South, 51; Southern 
encouragement, 51 ; South Car- 
olina's experiment, 52, 56; 



439 



INDEX 



foreign groups in South, 53, 
56-57; obstacles, 54-56; and 
negro question, 57 ; and cotton 
laborers, 264, 267 ; not remedy 
of race problem, 353; and pe- 
onage, 353; and crude labor, 
374; comparative statistics of 
foreign population, North and 
South, 398-399. 

Indian question, 76. 

Indian Territory, comparative 
statistics of, 399-417. 

Indiana. Colonization of Ne- 
groes in, 112; comparative 
statistics, 397-417. 

IndianapoUs. Negro question, 
112; negro schools, 313. 

Indianola, Miss., incident of ne- 
gro postmistress in, 171. 

Industrial education of Negro. 
Hampton and Tuskegee^ 319; 
public, 332; versus academic, 
332-334; dangers, 334. 

Industry. See Agriculture, Bus- 
iness, Commerce, Forests, La- 
bor, Manufactures, Mining, 
Wealth. 

Insane, comparative statistics 
of, North and South, 406-407. 

Iowa, comparative, statistics of, 
397-417. 

Iron, Southern mining and man- 
ufacture of, 25, 224. 

Italians in South, 53, 56-57, 272, 
281. 



Jackson, Miss., capitol at, 27. 
Jacksonville as port, 22. 



Jamaica, Negroes in, 98. 

Jefferson, Thomas, and coloniza- 
tion of Negroes, 350. 

Jim Crow cars, 168-171. 

Johnson, E. A., on race antagon- 
ism, 160. 

Jones, T. G., and peonage, 282, 
286. 

Jones, Tom, Negro, lynched, 213. 

Jonesville, La., Dayton planta- 
tion near, 255. 

Jury duty, Negroes and, 203. 

Juvenile criminals in South, 202; 
comparative statistics of de- 
linquents, 406-407; of reform 
schools, 416-417. 



K 



Kansas. Negro migration, 112; 
comparative statistics, 395- 
415. 

Kelsey, Carl, " Negro Farmer, " 
17; on negro immorahty, 134, 
135. 

Kentucky. Liquor manufacture, 
225; problem of negro educa- 
tion, 307; taxation for negro 
schools, 329; comparative sta- 
tistics, 397-417. 

Kowaliga, Ala., negro commun- 
ity at, 141. 

Ku-Klux Klan, evil of, 87. 



Labor. Of Poor Whites, 45; in 
cotton mills, 45, 275; foreign 
and negro, 55, 57; white, on 
cotton plantations, 57, 255, 262, 



430 



INDEX 



264, 267; negro, in North, 100 
negro, in South, 120-131; Ne- 
groes and gospel of work, 120 
Negroes and unskilled, 120 
white control of negro, 121 
willingness of blacks, 121-124 
negro managers, 123; negro 
domestic servants, 124-127 
blacks as farm laborers, 127 
skilled negro, 127, 225, 370 
unions and negro, 128, 370 
whipping on plantations, 194 
manufacture of iron, 224; in- 
fluence of Southern, on com- 
parative wealth, 232, 235, 246, 
247,277 ; system on cotton plan- 
tation, 254, 257, 261; cotton 
hands, 261-277; character, on 
cotton plantation, 263; child, 
in South, 264; cotton renters, 
croppers, and wage hands, 
265-266; instability of negro, 
266; negro monopoly of cotton 
culture, 267, 277; necessity of 
training of cotton hands, 267, 
273, 274; negro complaints, 
267; advance system and its 
effect, 268-273; peonage in 
South, 278-287; postbellum 
vagrant laws, 279; Negroes as 
peasants, 374-376; immigra- 
tion and crude, 374; compara- 
tive statistics of manufactur- 
ing wages. North and South, 
404-405. See also Immigra- 
tion. 

Lake Charles, La., Northerners 
at, 48. 

Lake City, S. C, attack on ne- 
gro postmaster at, 171. 



Lamar, L. Q. C, on cooperation 
with Negroes, 388. 

Land, negro ownership of, and 
uplift, 144, 372-374. 

Lanier, Sidney, as writer, 305. 

Lawyers, negro, 130, 335. 

Lead in South, 224. 

Leadership in South. Antebel- 
lum, 59; postwar changes, 60- 
62; social, 62; business, 62; po- 
litical, 63; homogeneity, 63; 
tone, 64; Negroes and negro 
leaders, 130, 379. 

Leasing of convicts in South, 
201, 286. 

Lee, S. D., on negro labor, 121. 

Legislation as remedy of race 
problem, 381-385. 

Leland University, founding of, 
309. 

Leonard, John, negro settlement 
started by, 141. 

Liberia, failure of, 96-97, 350. 

Libraries in South, 305. 

Lien loans on cotton plantations, 
268. 

Lilywhite Republicans, 173. 

Lincoln, Abraham. Minor's 
" Real Lincoln, " 85; Grady on, 
85; and colonization of Ne- 
groes, 350. 

Liquor. See Drink. 

Literature. Southern, 305; ne- 
gro, 325. 

Little River, plantations on, 255. 

Lockhart, Texas, peonage case, 
280. 

London, murders in, 184. 

Louisiana. Immigration, 52, 56, 
57; school system, 292; ilUter- 



431 



INDEX 



acy. 2^.^3; iiegjv^ illitoracy. 2\M; 
riinil schiH^ls, 2^kHJ: coinjvvra- 
tive statistics. ol)7-417. 

Louisvillo. tobacco manufactun.^ 
in, 22o: schools. 2\H>. 

Louisville Courier^ ourtMl. On 
South and inunigmtiou. 4^. 

Lower Sout h. extent . 20. v?J<^ (i/.<tt> 
South. 

Liunber. .Stv Forests. 

LjTiching. Cutler's researches. 
208: origin and eiirly practice, 
20S; pi\>tx>rtion. North and 
South. 2(.>.>. 210: not confineii 
to cases of rape, '209. 362: 
methtxis of h^lche^^, 210: mis- 
takes. 211: conduct of officials. 
211: and of mihtia. 212: justi- 
fied, 212; reasons for practice, 
race hostility. 213-215: sug- 
gestion of legaHzation. 215; 
as remedy for race problem, 
361-364; reduction. 364. 



McDonogh, John, educational 
bequest by. 289. 

Mclvinley, William, price of 
wheat and election of, 261. 

Macon Telegraph on Northern 
criticism, 243. 

Madison, Ga., popular hysteria 
in, on negro question, 164. 

Magic, negro belief in, 137. 

Malaria in South, 25. 

Manufacturers' Record. On im- 
migration, 54; on Southern 
wealth, 242, 243 : on wealth in 
cotton, 250; opposition to 



Northern educational aid. 307; 
on Atlanta riots, 390. 

Manufactures of South, 24, 224- 
225: cheap power. 26. 225: cot- 
ton, 45, 274-276: importation 
of ahens, 52; comparative sta- 
tistics. North and South. 237, 
23S. 276. 41H-405. 

M:\rriage. 5tY Miscegenation. 

Maryland . And Sout h , 20 : prob- 
lem of negro education, 307, 
329; comparative statistics, 
397-417. 

Massachusetts and school tax, 
329. 

Mean Whites, name for Poor 
Whites. 3S. 

Medicine. Negro ph^-sicians, 
129. 335: schools in South, 303. 

Memphis, progress, 242. 

Methodist Church. Negro. 117; 
educational commission of 
Southern, 300. 

Michigan, comparative statis- 
tics of, 397-417. 

Military service, negro. 129. 

MiUtia and lynchings, 212. 

Miller, KeUy. On Dixon. 10; as 
writer, 15, 325; on race antag- 
onism, 160; on negro advance- 
ment, 368. 371. 

Mining in South, 24. 224. 

Minnesota, comparative statis- 
tics of, 397-417. 

Minor, C. L. C. On Negroes un- 
der slavery, 83; "Real Lin- 
coln, " 85, 

Miscegenat ion , 1 5 1 - 1 54 ; and 
principle of social inequahty, 
154, 156; proliibition of mar- 



•43; 



INDEX 



riage, 155; white exclusion of 
mulattofiH, 150; remedy, 157; 
and calamity of amalgama- 
tion, 157. 

Mis8i.s«ippi. PoatFjellum vagrant 
laws, 168; negro voters, 170; 
valuations, 238; illiteracy, 294, 
school statistics, 295; lynch- 
ings, 363; comparative statis- 
tics, 39.S-415. 

Missouri. And South, 20; illiter- 
acy, 292; comparative statis- 
tics, 397-417. 

Mitchell, S. C, and negro devel- 
opment, 179, 345. 

Mitchell Co., N. C, Negroes ex- 
cluded from, 160. 

Mobile. As port, 22, 229; prog- 
ress, 28. 

Monroe, La., as trade center, 20. 

Montana, comparative statis- 
tics of, 397-417. 

Montgomery, founder of negro 
community, 141. 

Montgomery, Ala., progress, 29. 

Morals. Mountaineer, 35; poor 
white, 43; negro, 108-109, 134- 
137; mulatto, 112; miscegena- 
tion, 151-157. See aim Crime. 

Morristown, Tenn., treatment of 
Negroes in, 167. 

Mound Bayou, Miss., negro com- 
munity at, 141. 

Mt. Moriah, Ala., school at, 
297. 

Mountaineers, Southern, as fron- 
tiersmen, 23, 33, 37; condi- 
tions, 30-38; uniqueness, 30; 
region, 31; descent, 31-33; 
self -sustenance, 32; lowest 



type, "Ixxjmer, " 3.3-35; higher 
typf;, 35; a/^lvancf^rnent, 3.5- 
38; crime, 37; and negro que?^ 
tion, 38; as laborers in cotton 
mills, 275; Northern aid for 
education, 306. 

Muiattoes. And negro "race 
traits," 102; proportion, lir>- 
111; physique, ill; character, 
112; social position, 112, 1.56, 
339; and private negro schrxAs, 
316; literature, 325. 

Murders. Proportion in South, 
184; varieties, 18.5; of Negroes 
by Whites, 195-190; conduct 
of trials, 198; lynchings for, 
2m, 362. 

Murphy, E. G. "Present 
South," 13; on democratic de- 
velopment, 65; on race prob- 
lem, 69, 79, 345; on South and 
Northern critici.sm, 73; on .siir- 
vival of Negroes, 109; on race 
association, 15^J; and negro de- 
velopment, 179; on Poor 
Whites, 293; on Negro aca- 
demic training, 331. 

Museums, Southern, 304, 



Nashua, N. H., manufacturing 
output of, 276. 

National banks, comparative 
statistics of. North and South, 
402-403. See also Banking. 

Naval stores. Southern, 223. 

Nebraska. Illiteracy, 292; com- 
parative statistics, 397-417. 

" Negro a Beast, "11. 



433 



IXDEX 



Negroes. Writers, 14-17, 325; 
periodicals, 18; of Sea Islands, 
22, 107, 110, 137, 142; effect of 
urban life, 27, 114; and Moun- 
taineers, 38; and foreign im- 
migration, 55, 57; tempera- 
ment of Northern and South- 
em, 74; present attitude of 
North on question, 75; North- 
ern responsbility and interest 
in question, 75-79 ; persistence 
of question, 77; necessity of 
solution, 78; Southern belief 
in benefits of slavery, 83, 341; 
character, 91-105; population, 
91, 106, 397-399; names for, 
91; white generalizations on, 
92; character and capabil- 
ity in Africa, 94-96; failure 
of Liberia, 96-97, 350; condi- 
tions in West Indies, 97-99; 
in North, 99-101; question of 
inferiority, 101-105, 339; "race 
traits," 101, 110; lack of op- 
portunity, 103; and white 
standards, 103 ; arrested devel- 
opment, 104, 326; irresponsi- 
bility, 104; life, 106-119; diffu- 
sion, 106; ruralness, 107; sur- 
vival and death-rate, 107-110; 
divergent types, 110; propor- 
tion and character of mulat- 
toes, 110-112; Northward 
drift, 112, 354; white ignor- 
ance of negro life, 114, 124, 
340, 391; investigations of 
life, 114; rural houses, 115; 
family life, 116, 324; amuse- 
ments, 116; rehgious life, 117, 
380; secret societies, 118; as 

434 



managers, 123; and military 
service, 129; as business and 
professional men, 129-130, 
335; attitude towards leaders, 
130, 379; conferences, 131, 
389; question of advance- 
ment, 132-148; physical struc- 
ture and inferiority, 132-134; 
morality, 134-137; not retro- 
grading, 137, 143; morals un- 
der slavery, 138; faithfulness 
during Civil War, 139; evi- 
dences of advancement, 139- 
142; communities, 141; pro- 
portion of uplift, 143, 146, 339, 
368-369; accumulation of 
property, 143-148; savings, 
143, 376; real estate, 144-145, 
372-374; and tax-paying, 147; 
race association, 149-165 ; 
problem of association, 149- 
151; miscegenation, 151-157; 
remedy for it, 157; position of 
mulattoes, 156, 339; evil of 
amalgamation, 157, 349; 
growth of race antagonism, 
158-161, 216, 340, 389; white 
fear of negro domination, 160, 
172; Negroes on race antago- 
nism, 160; basis of antagonism, 
161 ; question of social equality, 
162-165, 340; race separation, 
166-180, 356-358; exclusion 
from settlements, 166; increas- 
ing segregation, 167; quar- 
ters in cities, 167; church sep- 
aration, 167; postbellum vag- 
rant laws, 168, 279; discrim- 
ination in travel, 168-171 ; and 
public positions, 171-174, 377; 



INDEX 



disfranchisement, 174-178, 
347-348, 376-377; white sup- 
pression of development, 178- 
180, 370-371; illustrations of 
white antagonism, 181-183; 
rough language by Whites, 
194; and present vagrant laws, 
200; and jury duty, 203; testi- 
mony, 203; race riots, 205-207; 
thriftlessness, 271; and news- 
papers, 324; summary of race 
problem, 338-341 ; race separa- 
tion and principle of equality, 
339, 344; perpetual inferiority 
and subjection, 339, 340, 343, 
344; agitation against, 341; 
postulates as to possible rem- 
edies of race problem, 343-346 ; 
wrong remedies, 347-366; no 
help from Congress, 347-348; 
nor from Northern propa- 
ganda, 348 ; nor from coloniza- 
tion 350-352; nor from substi- 
t\ition of white laborers, 352- 
354; nor from segregation, 
354-358 ; terrorizing as remedy 
358-366; material and politi- 
cal remedies, 367-377; advan- 
tage to Whites in negro upHft, 
371, 373; as peasant class, 
374-376; moral remedies, 378- 
394; influence of race separa- 
tion on uplift, 378-381, 388- 
391; suggestion of sociaUstic 
control over, 379; need of 
equitable vagrant laws, 383; 
special courts, 383; and prohi- 
bition, 384; necessity of dis- 
cussion of race problem, 389; 
essentials of remedy, 392-394; 



comparative statistics of in- 
sane and paupers. North and 
South, 406-407. See also Cot- 
ton, Crime, Education, Labor, 
Lynching, Peonage, Whites. 

Nevada, comparative statistics 
of, 399-417. 

New Hampshire, comparative 
statistics of, 399-417. 

New Mexico, comparative sta- 
tistics of, 399-417. 

New Orleans. As port, 22, 233; 
population and trade, 28; for- 
eign population, 51; negro 
population, 107; negro moral- 
ity, 108; rivalry with Galves- 
ton, 228; belt line, 228; prog- 
ress, 242; McDonogh bequest, 
289; discontinuance of negro 
high school, 315. 

New York City, murders in, 184. 

Newport News as port, 229, 
233. 

Newspapers. See Press. 

Niagara Movement, 389. 

Nixburg, Ala., negro community 
near, 141. 

No 'Count, name for Poor 
Whites, 38. 

Norfolk, Va. As port, 22, 229, 
233; Mrs. Douglass' negro 
school, 309. 

Normal schools in South. Devel- 
opment, 292; comparative sta- 
tistics, 296, 416-417. See also 
Teachers. 

North. Extent, 1; Northerners 
in South, 48-50; position of 
Southerners in, 49; Southern 
suspicion, 71, 73, 89; Southern 



435 



INDEX 



belief in hostility, 74; present 
attitude on race problem, 75; 
responsibility and interest in 
problem, 75-79; condition of 
Negroes in, 99-101; negro 
drift, 112, 354; crime, 183; 
idea of crime in South, 184; 
criminal spirit in, and in 
South, 197-199; lynching in, 
209, 210; comparative wealth 
{see Wealth) ; aid for Southern 
white education, 306; for ne- 
gro education, 315-317, 322; 
and solution of Southern race 
problem, 345, 347-349, 391; 
comparative statistics, 397- 
417. 

North Carolina. And immigra- 
tion, 52; and Mecklenburg 
Declaration, 81; early negro 
suffrage, 175; comparative sta- 
tistics, 397-417. 

North Carolina, University of. 
Founding, 290; standing, 302. 

North Dakota. School statis- 
tics, 295; comparative statis- 
tics, 397-417. 

Norwood, T. M., generahzation 
by, on Negroes, 93. 

O 

Oak Grove, Ala., negro school 
at, 312. 

Oats, comparative value of 
crops of, 241. 

Odum, H. W., negro researches 
by, 114. 

Ogden, R. C, and Southern Edu- 
cation Board, 306, 390. 



Oklahoma. And South, 20; com-- 

parative statistics of, 397-417. 
Onancock, Va., banishment of 

Negroes from, 206. 
Opelika, Ala., public buildings 

in, 27. 
Open-air life in South, 23, 25. 
Oregon, comparative statistics 

of, 397-417. 
Outlook, articles in, on Southern 

question, 18. 



Pace, J. W., peonage case, 282. 

Page, T.N. " Negro, " 12 ; on edu- 
cational value of slavery, 83; 
on failure of Negro, 101; on 
negro immorality, 134; on 
race antagonism, 150; on ne- 
gro capability, 326, 368; on 
evils of negro education, 327; 
on white dominance, 343; on 
negro court, 383; on mutual 
discussion of race problem, 
391; on need of negro uplift, 
392. 

Panama Canal and Southern 
commerce, 22. 

Pardon of criminals in South, 
203. 

Paupers, comparative statistics 
of, North and South, 406-i07. 

Peabody fund, 322. 

Peasant class, Negroes as, 374- 
376. 

Penn School in Sea Islands, 
316. 

Pensacola as port, 22, 229. 

Pensions, Southern income, 234. 



436 



INDEX 



Peonage. And immigration, 56, 
353; in South, 278-287; rise, 
278; federal law against, 278; 
principle, 279; development in 
cotton culture, 279; of Whites, 
280-281; restraint of move- 
ments of Negroes, 281-282; of 
Negroes under cover of laws, 
282-283, 365; illustrations, 
283-285; federal prosecutions, 
285; Southern approval, 286; 
federal investigation, 286; and 
leasing of convicts, 286; and 
negro shiftlessness, 287. 

Percy, Leroy. On remedy of 
race problem, 343, 345; on ne- 
gro education, 387. 

Peists, Southern, 25. 

Petroleum in South, 225. 

Philadelphia, negro mortality in, 
107. 

Phosphates in South, 225. 

Physical conditions of South, 20- 
29; swamps, 221. 

Physicians, negro, 129, 335. 

Physique, negro, and inferiority, 
132-134. 

Plantation. Application of term, 
253-255; present types, 255- 
256. See also Agriculture, 
Cotton. 

"Plow" division of farms, 
264. 

Poe, E. A., as Southern writer, 
305. 

PoHce. Treatment of Negroes, 
196; need of rural, 211, 382, 
384. 

Politics. Southern leadership, 
63; cause and effect of Solid i 



South, 72, 173, 174; coloniza- 
tion of Negroes in Indiana, 
112; Negroes and public posi- 
tions, 171-174, 377; Negroes 
and RepubUcan party in 
South, 173; negro suffrage, 
174-178, 347-348, 376-377. 

Poor Whites. Traditional home, 
21; conditions, 38-47; names 
for, 38; diffusion, 38; antebel- 
lum isolation, 38-41; and Civil 
War, 40; as farmers, 41, 45, 46; 
advancement, 41-47; morals, 
43; education, 44, 293; as wage 
earners, 44-45; in cotton mills, 
45, 275; northward and west- 
ward drift, 46 ; term a misnom- 
er, 47; turbulence, 64; and 
Southern problem, 344; need 
of uplift, 375. 

Population. Southern urban, 
28; of South, 30; Southern, of 
Northern birth, 48; foreign, in 
South, 50; negro, 91, 106; ne- 
gro death-rate, 107-110; 
Southern agricultural, 221 ; 
comparative statistics, North 
and South, 397-399. 

Ports of the South, 22, 28, 228- 
229, 233. 

Portsmouth, Va., as port, 229, 
233. 

Post-office. Negro employees, 
171, 172; need of Postal Sav- 
ings Banks in South, 376. 

Potatoes, comparative value of 
crop of, 241. 

Press, Southern. Character, 70; 
negro journalists, 130, 324; 
Negroes and newspapers, 324. 



437 



INDEX 



Price. Of farm lands, 220; of 

cotton, 252. 
Prisons in South, 201; reform, 

202; comparative statistics of 

prisoners, 406-407 
Professions. Negroes in, 129, 

335; schools in South, 292, 303. 
Prohibition as remedy of race 

problem, 384. 
Property. See Land, Taxation, 

Wealth. 
Protestant Episcopal Church 

and race separation, 167. 
Pulaski Co., Ga., increasing ne- 
gro population of, 167. 
Pullman Car Co. and Jim Crow 

cars, 169. 



Race. See Negroes, Remedies, 
Whites. 

Railroads of South. Race sep- 
aration, 168-171; develop- 
ment, 226-227; New Orleans 
belt road, 228; control, 229; 
comparative mileage of seced- 
ing states, 237; of whole 
South, 248. 

Rape, negro, of white women, 
191-193; early examples, 208; 
lynching not confined to, 209, 
362; not on increase, 209; and 
justification of lynching, 213, 
214. 

Real estate, negro, 144-145. 

Reclamation of Southern 
swamps, 221. 

Reconstruction. Present South- 
ern attitude, 85-88; Ku-Klux, 



87; and race. antagonism, 159;^ 
negro suffrage, 175, 376; edu- 
cational measures, 292, 310. 

Red Necks, name for Poor 
Whites, 38. 

Reed, J. C. On Dixon, 9; on Ne- 
groes under slavery, 83; on 
Ku-Klux, 87; on negro segre- 
gation, 355. 

Religion. Of Mountaineers, 35; 
of Negroes in Africa, 94; ne- 
gro, in South, 117, 129; ques- 
tion of negro paganism, 137; 
race separation, 167; training 
of Southern ministers, 303; 
Church and race problem, 380. 

Remedies of race problem. 
Summary of problem, 338- 
340; essential conditions, 340; 
types of altitude of Southern 
Whites, 340-343; postulates, 
343-345; division of Whites, 
345-346, 391; wrong, 347-366; 
no Congressional interference, 
347-348; no Northern private 
propaganda, 348; no amalga- 
mation, 349; no colonization, 
350-352 ; no substitutes for ne- 
gro laborers, 352-354; no seg- 
regation, 354-356; possibility 
of race separation, 356-358; 
terrorizing, 358-366; legalized 
terror, 364; material, 367-376; 
possibility and permission of 
general negro uplift, 367-372; 
land-buying by Negroes, 372- 
374 ; Negroes as peasants, 374- 
376; aids for thrift, 376; polit- 
ical, 376-377; moral, 378-394; 
influence of race separation, 



438 



INDEX 



378-381; character of negro 
leaders, 379; benevolent state 
socialism, 379; influence of 
Church, 380; legislative and 
judicial, 381-385; negro edu- 
cation, 385-388; need of race 
cooperation and discussion, 
388-391 ; last analysis of prob- 
lem, 392-394; white duties, 
392; patience, 392-394. 

Renters on cotton plantations, 
256, 266. 

Restaurants, race separation in, 
in South, 170. 

Rhett, Barnwell, Northern edu- 
cation of, 290. 

Rice as Southern crop, 251. 

Richmond. Race separation, 
167; tobacco manufacture, 
225; progress, 242. 

Richmond Times Despatch on 
immigration, 54. 

"Riders'" on cotton plantations, 
258, 263. 

Riots, race, 205-208, 390. 

Roads, Southern, 227. 

Roosevelt, Theodore. Booker 
Washington incident, 162 ; and 
appointment of Negroes, 171, 
174; rewards faithful state 
official, 211 ; on lynchings, 
363. 

Rural life. Open-air life, 23, 25; 
preponderance in South, 27-29 ; 
negro propensity, 107; police, 
221, 382, 384; schools, 296- 
299, 311-313; relative lack of 
progress, 242. See also Agri- 
culture. 

Russell, C. W., on peonage, 286. 



St. Louis, schools in, 296. 

Salisbury, N. C, lynching in, 
210. 

Sand Hillers, name for Poor 
Whites, 38. 

Santo Domingo, Negroes in, 99. 

Savannah as port, 22, 28, 229. 

Savings banks, need of, in South, 
376. 

Saxons, Taine on, 102. 

Sea Islands, 22; Negroes of, 107, 
110, 137, 142; trucking, 220; 
cotton, seed trust, 252; gin- 
ning and bagging of cotton, 
259; war-time negro schools, 
309; present education, 316. 

Secession, present Southern at- 
titude toward, 84. 

Secondary education. Develop- 
ment of Southern, 292, 299; 
comparative statistics. North 
and South, 296, 412-413; ne- 
gro, 314; hostility to negro, 
319, 335. 

Secret societies, negro, 118. 

Shannon, A. H. " Racial Integ- 
rity, " 12; on mulattoes. 111. 

Shipp, J. F., and lynching, 212. 

Shreveport. Public buildings, 
27; Italians at, 57. 

Shufeldt, R. W., "Negro a Men- 
ace, " 8. 

Sinclair, W. A. "Aftermath of 
Slavery," 15; as writer, 325. 

Slater fund, 322. 

Slavery. Effect on South, 2 ; and 
Southern attitude towards 
history, 80; traditional belief 



439 



INDEX 



in prosperity under, 82, 218; 
and in benefit to Negro, 83, 
341; domestic servants, 126; 
negro morals under, 138; per- 
sonal race association under, 
158; chattel, and leasing of 
convicts, 201; in Philippines, 
279; and education of Negroes, 
308. See also Peonage. 

Smith, Hoke. Gubernatorial 
campaign, 173; on negro edu- 
cation, 329; on white control 
over Negroes, 341. 

Smith, W. B. " Color Line, " 13; 
on South and outside public 
opinion, 77; on negro inferior- 
ity, 133; apology for lynching, 
363. 

Social life in South. Open-air, 
23; of Northerners, 49; leader- 
ship, 59-62; character, 62; 
crudeness of behavior, 64; 
democratic uplift, 65; of Ne- 
groes in North, 100; miscege- 
nation and social inequality of 
Negroes, 154, 156; exclusion of 
mulattoes, 156; question of ne- 
gro equality, 162-165, 340; 
race equality and negro offi- 
cials, 171; negro homes, 324. 

Socialism and race problem, 379. 

Solid South, cause and effect of, 
72. 

South. As part of Union, 1-3; 
individuality, 2, 30; author's 
preparation for judging, 3-6; 
materials on, 7-19; physical 
conditions, 20-29; extent, 20; 
physical divisions, 20-22 ; 
Black Belt, 21; forests, 22; 



climate, 24; mining, 24; pests, 
25; health, 25; architecture, 
26, 304; rural preponderance, 
27-29; comparative statistics, 
397-417. See also Agriculture, 
Cities, Civil War, Commerce, 
Cotton, Crime, Education, 
History, Immigration, Labor, 
Leadership, Manufactures, Ne- 
groes, Peonage, Politics, Popu- 
lation, Reconstruction, Reme- 
dies, Slavery, Social life, 
Wealth, Whites. 

South Atlantic Monthly and dis- 
cussion of race problem, 390. 

South Carolina. Loss of natives, 
47; immigration experiment, 
52, 56; postbellum vagrant 
laws, 168; murders in, 184; 
valuations, 238; cotton manu- 
factures, 275, 276; peonage in, 
284; illiteracy, 293; school sta- 
tistics, 295; rural police, 384; 
comparative statistics, 397- 
417. 

South Dakota, comparative sta- 
tistics of, 397-417. 

Southern Education Association 
and negro education, 327. 

Southern Education Board, 300, 
306, 390. 

"Southern South," meaning of 
term, 6. 

Spartanburg, water - power in, 
26. 

Spencer, Samuel, and immigra- 
tion, 52. 

Springfield, 111., race riot in. 207. 

Springfield, Ohio, race riot in, 
207. 



440 



INDEX 



Statistical Abstract, data from, 
235, 243. 

Steamboat, race separation on 
Southern, 169. 

Stock, Southern, 251. 

Stone, A. H. Studies of negro 
question, 17; on foreign and 
negro cotton hands, 58; on ne- 
gro accumulation of property, 
146; on lien loans, 268. 

Stone and Webster, and electric 
power and transportation, 227. 

Straight University, founding of, 
309. 

Street railways. Race separa- 
tion on Southern, 170; inter- 
urban trolleys, 227. 

Suffrage. Northern distrust of 
negro, 100; effect of disfran- 
chisement on negro leadership, 
131; negro, 174-175; negro dis- 
franchisement, 175-177, 345; 
reason for disfranchisement, 
178; enforcement of Four- 
teenth Amendment, 347; fed- 
eral control of elections, 348. 

Sugar, Southern crop of, 251. 

Sugar beets, Southern crop of, 
251. 

Sulphur in South, 225. 

Sulu Archipelago, slavery in, 
279. 

Sunny Side. Italian labor at, 
57; plantation, 256; alleged 
peonage case, 281. 

Superstition^, negro, 138. 

Swamps, Southern, 25; reclama- 
tion of, 221. 

Syracuse, Ohio, Negroes exclud- 
ed from, 166. 



Taine, H. A., on Saxons, 102. 

Talassee, school at, 297. 

Talladega, school at, 389. 

Tar Heels, name for Poor Whites, 
38. 

Taxation. Negroes and, 147, 
330 ; assessment valuations 
as comparison of Southern 
wealth, 235; comparative val- 
uations of seceding states, 236 ; 
of whole South, 239-241, 244, 
248, 400-401; on basis of 
white population, 246; ante- 
and post-bellum valuation in 
South, 237; school, in South, 
295, 306; burden of, for negro 
schools, 328-331. 

Teachers, Southern. Of rural 
white schools, 298; of negro 
schools, 310, 314, 320; boy- 
cott of Northern, of negro 
schools, 316; need of white, for 
colored schools, 385-387; com- 
parative statistics. North and 
South, 408-417. 

Temperament of Southern 
Whites, 66-79; difficulty in 
determining, 66 ; emotional- 
ism, 66, 164; influence of race 
problem, 67-69, 74; diversity 
on problem, 69-70; impatience 
of dissent, 70, 72, 390; sus- 
picion of Northerners, 71, 73, 
74, 89; attitude towards crit- 
icism, 71-73, 243; exaggera- 
tion, 73; of Negroes, 74; 
Whites, and outside interest in 
race problem, 75-79; attitude 



441 



mi)' ^.x 



towards history, 80-90, 218; 
veneration for ancestors, 81. 

Tennessee. School statistics, 
295; comparative statistics, 
397-417. 

Tensas River, plantations on, 
255. 

Testimony, negro, 203. 

Texas. Urban population, 29; 
immigration from other states, 
47; foreign settlement, 53; 
value of farms, 238; school 
statistics, 248, 295, 306; com- 
parative statistics, 397-417. 

Texas, University of, standing 
of, 302. 

Theft, Negroes and, 186. 

Thomas, William Hannibal. 
" American Negro, " 15; on ne- 
gro morals, 134. 

Thomas, WiUiam Holcombe. 
On race association, 150; on 
homicides, 197. 

Thorsby, Ala., Northern com- 
munity at, 49. 

Tillman, B. R. As political 
leader, 63; anti-negro general- 
izations, 93 ; on newly import- 
ed slaves, 110; attitude on ne- 
gro disfranchisement, 177; on 
lynching, 213; and race prob- 
lem, 345, 359. 

Tilhnan, J. H., killing of Gon- 
zales by, 185. 

Tobacco. Southern manufac- 
ture, 224; comparative value 
of crop, 241. 

Toombs, Robert, on South under 
slavery, 82. 

Trade. See Commerce. 



Transportation. Race separa-, 
tion in South, 168-171; South- 
ern conditions, 226-230. 

Trucking in South, 24, 220, 251. 

Trudics peonage case, 280. 

Tulane University, standing of, 
300, 307. 

Turner, H. M., on negro segrega- 
tion, 355. 

Turner peonage case, 284, 365. 

Turpentine, Southern industry, 
223. 

Tuskegee Institute. Conferences, 
131, 389; influence, 319; num- 
ber of students, 332; opposi- 
tion, 332; basis of success, 334. 



U 



Union, South and, 1, 5. 
Urban life. See Cities. 
Utah, comparative statistics of, 
397-417. 



Vagrant laws. Southern. Post- 
bellum, 168, 279; present, 200; 
need of equitable, 383. 

Valdese, N. C, ItaUans at, 57. 

Valdosta, Ga., negro teachers in, 
314. 

Vardaman, J. K. As political 
leader, 63; abuse of Negro, 
72, 93; on negro inferiority, 
101; on leasing convicts, 202; 
pardons, 202 ; opposition to ne- 
gro education, 327, 371; and 
race problem, 345; on illegal 
control of Negroes, 365. 



442 



INDEX 



Venereal disease, Negroes and, 
108. 

Vermont. School statistics, 295; 
comparative statistics, 397- 
417. 

Vice. See Morals. 

Virginia. And Hampton Insti- 
tute, 317; comparative statis- 
tics, 397-417. 

Virginia Cooperative Educa- 
tion Association, 306. 

Virginia, University of. Found- 
ing, 290; standing of, 203. 

W 

Wage hands on cotton planta- 
tions, 265. 

Wages. See Labor, Teachers. 

Wanderer, Negroes imported in, 
110. 

Washington, B. T. Works on ne- 
gro problem, 15; negro hostil- 
ity to, 130; on acquiring land, 
144, 372; incident of lunch 
with Roosevelt, 162; Dixon on, 
180, 319, 332; on South as 
home of Negro, 262, 355; on 
treatment of cotton hands, 
267; influence of Tuskegee, 
319; as writer, 325; as leader, 
333, 334. 

Washington, George, and fertil- 
izing, 253. 

Washington, State of, compara- 
tive statistics of, 399-417. 

Watauga Co., N. C, Negroes ex- 
cluded from, 166. 

Water-power in South, 26, 225. 

Waterways, Southern, 226. 



Watson, T. E., on cry of negro 
domination, 160. 

Watterson, Henry, on Southern 
wealth, 231. 

Wealth, Southern. Private, 62 
enlarged views, 89, 231, 247 
negro accumulation, 143-148 
actual, 218-230; under slavery 
218; postbellum poverty, 219 
recent great increase, 219; ag- 
ricultural, 220-221; forests, 
221-224; mineral, 224; in man- 
ufactures, 224-225 : capital 
and banking, 225; commercial, 
226-229, 233; comparative, 
North and South, 231-249; 
Southern claims considered, 
232, 247, 249, 276, 338; in- 
fluence of labor conditions, 
232, 235, 246, 247, 277; pen- 
sions, 234; proper basis for 
comparison, 234; comparative 
tables, 234, 400-417; materials 
for comparison, 235; compara- 
tive, of seceding states, 236- 
239, 248; of whole South, 239- 
245, 248; on basis of white 
population, 246-247 ; uneven 
advance of Southern, 242 ; act- 
ual and comparative rate of 
Southern accumulation, 243- 
245. 

West Indies, capacity of Negroes 
in, 97-99. 

West Virginia. And South, 20; 
comparative statistics, 399- 
417. 

Wheat. As an export, 233; 
Southern crop, 251 ; price and 
election of Mclvinley, 261. 



443 



IXDEX 



Whipping on plantations, 194. 

White Trash, name for Poor 
Whites, 38. 

Whitecapping, 195. 

Whites, Southern. Effect of 
city hfe, 27; position of North- 
erners in South, 48-50; small 
farmers, 60; division on, and 
discussion of race problem, 67- 
72, 345-346, 391; generaliza- 
tions on Negroes, 92; Southern 
exaltation, 102; ignorance of 
negro life, 114, 124, 340, 391; 
race association, 149-165; 
problem of association, 149- 
151; miscegenation, 151-157; 
remedy for it, 157; exclusion 
of mulattoes, 156 ; evil of 
amalgamation, 157, 344, 349; 
growth of race antagonism, 
158-161, 216, 340, 389; fear of 
negro domination, 160, 172; 
Negroes on race antagonism, 
160; basis of prejudice, 161; 
race separation, 160-180; fear 
of negro social equality, 162- 
165, 340; suppression of negro 
development by, 178-180; il- 
lustration of race antagonism, 
181-183; responsibility for in- 
efficient criminal justice, 203; 
comparative wealth of South 
on basis of white inhabitants, 
235, 246; laborers on cotton 
plantations, 255, 262, 264, 267 ; 
peonage of, 280-281 ; advance- 
ment, 339; domination, 339, 
343; perpetual superiority, 
340; violent agitation of race 
problem, 341; despair over 



problem, 342; to control set-^ 
tlement of problem, 344; ter- 
rorizing of Negroes, 358-366; 
advantages to, of negro up- 
Uft, 371, 373; necessity of 
cooperation with Negroes, 
388-391; duties in problem, 
392; comparative statistics of 
population, 397-399. See also 
Crime, Education, Histo- 
ry, Immigration, Leadership, 
Mountaineers, Negroes, Poor 
Whites, Remedies, Social hfe, 
Temperament. 

Whittaker, assault by, 186. 

Williams, G. W., "Negro Race 
in America, " 14. 

Williams, J. S. On immigration, 
51, 352; senatorial campaign, 
72 ; on increasing race antago- 
nism, 159, 361 ; on basis of race 
prejudice, 161; on remedy of 
race problem, 343, 394; on ne- 
gro emigration, 352; on good 
conduct of negroes, 368; on 
recognizing negro worth, 380; 
on prevention of negro crimes, 
382. 

Wilmington, Del., lynching in, 
210. 

Wilmington, N. C. As port, 22, 
229; banishment of Negroes, 
206. 

Winston, G. T. On South, 5; 
on negro criminality, 188; on 
negro uplift, 371. 

Wirz, Henry, statue to, 89. 

Wisconsin. School statistics, 
295 ; comparative statistics, 
397-417. 



444 



INDEX 



Women. Labor on cotton plan- 
tations, 265; school education 
in South, 299; college educa- 
tion, 301, 302. 

Wool, Southern crop of, 251. 

World Almanac, statistics from, 
235, 248. 

World's Work, articles in, on 
Southern question, 18. 

"Worth, Nicholas." "Autobi- 
ography," 18; on Southerners 



and criticism, 72; on Southern 
exaggeration, 73; on histor- 
ical ignorance, 83; on race an- 
tagonism, 159; on training 
cotton hands, 267. 
Wyoming, comparative statistics 
of, 399-417. 



Zinc in South, 224. 



(1) 



THE END 



VlVm, MOVING, SYMPATHETIC, HUMOROUS. 



A Diary from Dixie. 

By Mary Boykin Chesnut. Being her Diary from 
November, 1861, to August, 1865. Edited by Isabella D. 
Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary. Illustrated. 8vo. Orna- 
mental Cloth, $2.50 net; postage additional. 

Mrs. Chesnut was the most brilliant woman that the South 
has ever produced, and the charm of her writing is such as to 
make all Southerners proud and all Northerners envious. She was 
the wife of James Chesnut, Jr., who was United States Senator 
from South Carolina from 1859 to 1861, and acted as an aid to 
President Jefferson Davis, and was subsequently a Brigadier-Gen- 
eral in the Confederate Army. Thus it was that she was intimately 
acquainted with all the foremost men in the Southern cause. 

" In this diary is preserved the most moving and vivid record of the South- 
ern Confederacy of v/hich we have any knowledge. It is a piece of social 
history of inestimable value. It interprets to posterity the spirit in which the 
Southerners entered upon and struggled through the war that ruined them. 
It paints poignantly but with simplicity the wreck of that old world which had 
so much about it that was beautiful and noble as well as evil. Students of 
American life have often smiled, and with reason, at the stilted and extrava- 
gant fashion in which the Southern woman had been described south of Mason 
and Dixon's line — the unconscious self-revelations of Mary Chesnut explain, 
if they do not justify, such extravagance. For here, we cannot but believe, 
is a creature of a fine type, a ' very woman,' a very Beatrice, frank, impetuous, 
loving, full of sympathy, full of humor. Like her prototype, she had preju- 
dices, and she knew little of the Northern people she criticised so severely ; 
but there is less bitterness in these pages than we might have expected. Per- 
haps the editors have seen to that. However this may be they have done 
nothing to injure the writer's own nervous, unconventional style -a style 
breathing character and temperament as the flower breathes fragrance." 

— New York Tribune. 

"It is written straight from the heart, and with a natural grace of style 
that no amount of polishing could have imparted." — Chicago Record-Herald. 

"The editors are to be congratulated ; it is not every day that one comes 
on such material as this long-hidden diary." — Louisville Evening Post. 

" It is a book that would have delighted Charles Lamb." 

— Houston Chronicle. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



A NOVEL THAT IS ALL TRUEL 



Bethany : A story of the Old South. 

By Thomas E. Watson, author of "The Life 
and Times of Thomas Jefferson," etc. Illustrated. 
i2mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50. 

" Few writers of the present day have reached the deserved literary emi- 
nence and prominence that has been achieved by Thomas E. Watson, Presi- 
dential candidate of the People's Party, author of ' The Life and Times of 
Thomas Jefferson ' and other important historical works, Mr. Watson is a 
student, historian, and biographer, as well as a finished orator. It comes in 
the nature of a pleasant surprise, therefore, to find that this brilliant author 
has turned his attention to fiction. Probably no writer of the present day 
brings just such broad knowledge, scholarly attainments, and intimate style 
into the composition of his books as does Mr. Watson. He is particularly 
qualified to bring to a successful termination any literary work he may attempt. 
In ' Bethany ' he tells in his brilliant style of the old South as he knew it in 
his boyhood. This work is only in part fiction. Mr. Watson has succeeded 
admirably in picturing the life of the people of Georgia during the anti- 
slavery controversy and the war itself. In doing this he has written a book 
that throbs with human emotions on every page and pulsates with strong, 
virile life in every sentence. Mr. Watson has written ' Bethany ' from the heart 
as well as from the head. With broad comprehension and unfailing accuracy 
he has drawn characters and depicted incidents which deserve to be considered 
as models of the people." 

"The Hon. Thomas E. Watson of Georgia is a man of many parts. 
Above all he is still able to learn, as those who will compare the second part 
of his ' Story of France ' with the first may easily see. In ' Bethany : A Story 
of the Old South,' he plunges into romance, it seems to us with complete suc- 
cess. The story is told directly, clearly, in excellent Enghsh, and is as vivid a 
picture of a Southern family during the war as anyone could wish for." 

— New York Sun, 

"As a ' true picture of the times and the people,' as of war and its horrors, 
the book will be welcomed by both North and South. Clear, simple, occa- 
sionally abrupt, the story is always subordinated to the historical facts that lie 
back of it. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that each illumines the other, nor that 
• Bethany ' possesses distinct value as a just and genuine contribution to the 
literature of the present ' Southern revival.' " — Chicago Record- Her aid. 

"The love-story of the young soldier and his faithful sweetheart is a per- 
fect idyll of old plantation life, and its sad ending fits properly into the tragedy 
of that fearful war."— 5/. Louis Globe- Democrat. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. NEW YORK. 



UNLIKE ANY OTHER BOOK. 
A Virginia Girl in the Civil War. 

Being the Authentic Experiences of a Confederate 
Major's Wife who followed her Husband into Camp at 
the Outbreak of the War. Dined and Supped with General 
J. E. B. Stuart, ran the Blockade to Baltimore, and was 
in Richmond when it was Evacuated. Collected and 
edited by Myrta Locke rx Avary. i2mo. Cloth, $1.25 
net ; postage additional. 

"The people described are gentlefolk to the back-bone, and the reader 
must be a hard-hearted cynic if ht- does not fall in love with the ingenuous 
and delightful girl who tells the story."— iView York Sun. 

" The narrative is one that both interests and charms. The beginning of 
the end of the long and desperate .struggle is unusually well told, and how 
the survivors lived during the last days of the fading Confederacy forms a 
vivid picture of those distressful times." — Baltimore Herald. 

"The style of the narrative is attractively informal and chatty. Its 
pathos is that of simplicity. It throws upon a cruel period of our national 
career a side-light, bringing out tender and softening interests too little visi- 
ble in the pages of formal history." — New York World. 

" This is a tale that will appeal to every Southern man and woman, and 
can not fail to be of interest to every reader. It is as fresh and vivacious, 
even in dealing with dark days, as the young soul that underwent the hard- 
ships of a most cruel war." — Louisville Courier- Journal. 

" The narrative is not formal, is often fragmentary, and is always warmly 
human. . . . There are scenes among the dead and wounded, but as one 
winks back a tear the next page presents a negro commanded to mount a 
strange mule in midstream, at the injustice of which he strongly protests." — 
New York Telegram. 

"Taken at this time, when the years have buried all resentment, dulled 
all sorrows, and brought new generations to the scenes, a work of this kind 
can not fail of value just as it can not fail in interest. Official history moves 
with two great strides to permit of the smaller, more intimate events ; fiction 
lacks the realistic, powerful appeal of actuality ; such works as this must be 
depended upon to fill in the unoccupied interstices, to show us just what 
were the lives of those who were in this conflict or who lived in the midst of 
it without being able actively to participate in it. And of this type ' A Vir- 
ginia Girl in the Civil War' is a truly admirable txaxa^Xe:."— Philadelphia 
Record. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



^' EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD READ IT.'' 

— The Ne^wSf Providence, 

The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson. ^ 

By Thomas E. Watson, Author of ''The Story of 
France," '* Napoleon," etc. Illustrated with many Portraits 
and Views. 8vo. Attractively bound, $2.50 net ; postage, 
17 cents additional. 

Mr. Watson long ^ince acquired a national reputation in connection 
with his political activities in Georgia. He startled the public soon 
afterward by the publication of a history of France, which at once 
attracted attention quite as marked, though different in kind. His book 
became interesting not alone as the production of a Southern man 
interested in politics, but as an entirely original conception of a great 
theme. There was no question that a life of Jefferson from the hands of 
such a writer would command very general attention, and the publishers 
had no sooner announced the work as in preparation than negotiations 
were begun with the author by two of the best-known newspapers in 
America for its publication in serial form. During the past summer the 
appearance of the story in this way has created widespread comment 
which has now been drawn to the book just published. 

Opinions by some of the Leading Papers. 

" A vastly entertaining polemic. It directs attention to many undoubtedly 
neglected facts which writers of the North have ignored or minimized." 

— The New York Times Saturday Review of Books. 

"A noble work. It may well stand on the shelf beside Morley's 
• Gladstone ' and other epochal biographical works that have come into 
prominence. It is deeply interesting and thoroughly fair and just."' 

— The Globe-Democrat^ St. Louis. 

" The book shows great research and is as complete as it could possibly be, 
and every American should read xV—The News, Providence. 

" A unique historical work."— T'-*^ Commercial Advertiser, New York. 

" Valuable as an historical document and as a witness to certain great facts 
in the past life of the South which have seldom been acknowledged by 
historians." — The Post, Louisville. 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



-^^NSOWdS 



